Defeat Discouragement

Sermon Transcript

“DEFEATING DISCOURAGEMENT”

Pastor Phil Winfield

Nehemiah 4:1-23

October 14, 2007

Grace Church of Des Moines, IA

4200 E. 25th StreetDes Moines, IA 50317

Website:  http://www.gracehome.com

Online Sermons:  http://gracehome.sermonaudio.com

I want to talk to you about defeating discouragement from Nehemiah chapter four. And in order to do that we had better take a peak right up here and realize that as we have studied this book of Nehemiah and we have talked about building the walls of our life or building for a successful life, many of us have had to go back and rebuild our walls.  Others are young and they are just building their life. We are trying to help them.  But everybody here, whether you are an older Christian or a younger Christian or whether you don’t even know the Lord at all, we have to face the fact that in front of us there are always issues at work.  There are always circumstances that are happening. We need to always be on guard and building our life for success.And the way that we looked at this with Nehemiah was first we had to face the reality of our life, take a real honest look, what is going on in my life.  What is right?  Are things going well?  Do we have our head in the sand like an ostrich or are we actually...are we actually facing the truth?Then after we understood that we have to face reality, there was the idea of prayer. And when do we pray?  Well, we pray before we do anything else in our life. And so we pray recognizing that God has put is in position just like he did Nehemiah. We are in the right position to take action. And that first action we take is always prayer.Third, if we are going to make progress we have to proceed through the fear by faith. Fear is always there.  It is always difficult. When you start facing the truth about your life and the truth about your needs and the truth about your church, truth about your community, it is always a fearful thing because we know that any time we stir the water it makes mud. And we know that any time we push the mud is going to push back.  And so we have to face our fears with faith. And faith is not the absence of fear. Faith is going on instead of our fears.Then we had to investigate and communicate.  You say, “Well, what was that all about?  I forgot.”  Well, there are many details that have to do with how we got ourselves in the situations we are in in our life.  So we have to address them.  We have got to begin untying some of the knots.  We have to start taking these things to the Lord in prayer and seeing how God can begin to work things out.  So we investigate and then we communicate to those that we love the most and those that love us and care. This is what I am attempting to do.  Here is the direction that I am going and I want you to know about it so that you can help me in doing that.And during that lesson and that sermon I made a statement that may be one of the weightier statements of everything I say the whole time and that is that we alone, I alone, must face my problems.  I alone must face my problems, but I alone cannot fix my problems.  We need the help of God.  We need the help of other believers.  We need the help of our family members.  We need support. And so that is what that is about.And then, number five, that was so well illustrated this morning by the small group, we need teamwork. A team is always better than an individual and two people working alone can’t get as much done as two people working together.  And a three fold cord is not easily broken, Proverbs tells us.  And so we are supposed to work together.Now, we come to week number six.  And, folks, we are on the downhill side of this study. This is number six. Numbers six, seven and eight, I believe, are the most important messages of the entire series.  Tune in, listen and I believe God is really going to make an impact.They key building block for today that I want you to remember, the word that I want you to carry with you when you leave is the word “tenacity.”You say, “Pastor, is tenacity a Bible word?”Nope, but it sure is a Bible principle and it is a Bible foundation.  It takes tenacity.You say, “Well, what’s tenacity?”Tenacity is what my rottweiler dogs had in Peru.  My rottweilers would get a hold of something. If they got a hold of it that was the end of it.  I had a dog named Blitz and Blitz was a rottweiler and she loved to play and her play toy was a full sized car tire.  And you think I’m kidding, but I’m not kidding.Now, it was a worn tire.  I’m not going to make you think it was a Mack truck tire with full tread. No it was a tire, but a full size car tire and it was worn.That crazy dog could bite it right in the tread, crunch it down and you did not get it away from her.  That was all there was to it.  And we dragged that dog all over the place.  One time we were robbed and she got a hold of somebody.  Boy, I’d hate to see the person that she got a hold of.But anyway, tenacity.  Get a hold of something and just hold on.  Get working on something and just not let up.  Tenaciousness, tenacity.  And that is the word that you need to remember this morning.  And it is an idea.  It is a thought and it is an absolute necessity.  It is a building block in your life that you have got to have.  So tenacity.Let me read it to you beginning in verse number one.  Here is what God’s Word says.But it so happened, when Sanballat heard that we were rebuilding the wall, that he was furious and very indignant, and mocked the Jews.  And he spoke before his brethren and the army of Samaria, and said, "What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they fortify themselves? Will they offer sacrifices? Will they complete it in a day? Will they revive the stones from the heaps of rubbish––stones that are burned?"  Now Tobiah the Ammonite was beside him, and he said, "Whatever they build, if even a fox goes up on it, he will break down their stone wall."Now that was a lie. The thing was nine to 12 feet wide and a fox is not going to knock it down.Hear, O our God, for we are despised; turn their reproach on their own heads, and give them as plunder to a land of captivity!  Do not cover their iniquity, and do not let their sin be blotted out from before You; for they have provoked You to anger before the builders.  So we built the wall, and the entire wall was joined together up to half its height, for the people had a mind to work.Now it happened, when Sanballat, Tobiah, the Arabs, the Ammonites, and the Ashdodites [notice that the crowd against them is growing. They are stirring others. When they] heard that the walls of Jerusalem were being restored and the gaps were beginning to be closed, that they became very angry, and all of them conspired together to come and attack Jerusalem and create confusion.  Nevertheless we made our prayer to our God, and because of them we set a watch against them day and night.  Then Judah said, "The strength of the laborers is failing, and there is so much rubbish that we are not able to build the wall."And, Father, add your blessing to the preaching and teaching of your Word and help us to put this key piece in our wall of our life and that is the sticktoitiveness, tenacity, dedication and commitment to the task.  We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.Would you be seated?Everybody loves the start of a thing.  Being on a high school football team, joining the Marines, getting a medical degree, finishing the basement or even running a marathon all have lots of participants at first and up to a point.  Somewhere between the over romanticized idea of being a marine or scoring a winning touchdown we face the troublesome facts that it will require work and that there will be opposition.That is a funny little detail of anything that you are trying to accomplish in your life.  It is that hated part.  It is you start moving forward and try to accomplish anything, whether you are trying to get a high school or college degree or whether you are trying to repair your home and reestablish the lines of communication with your wife, it is going to take two things.  There are going to be two issues to face.   Number one, there will be work involved.  Number two, you will face opposition.  It is axiomatic. You are not going to be able to get by without it.To keep going at the halfway point in the marathon is the great battle. To keep going half way to the goal is the battle that we always fight.  Getting beyond, getting beyond half way is the difficult place.It is very interesting to me that just about the half way point of this wall, they have got this thing up to the half way point.  I don’t know what half way was.  It might have been...maybe it was an eight foot, 10 foot, 12 foot wall, but do the math.  It is going to be either here or here or here.  It was a big wall they were building and they got it up to about half way and just about when it became noticeable that they were making progress, the opposition, the difficulty, the tiredness, it started to set in.  And so it works that way.There are people in this room this morning that time and again you have made a commitment or you made an emotional decision.  “It’s time to change my life, time to turn it around, time to start...”And, boy, you start making progress and just about the half way point you get difficulties and you get discouraged and people stand up against you and people say things.  Well, to keep going we have to have tenacity.After a concert someone had told a world famous pianist, “I want to learn to play just like you do with the same ease and accomplishment.”He said, “Great.  You need to go back to being six years old and then you need to choose beginning at six years old to always choose practice over pleasure, discipline over leisure.  Forget baseball, basketball, football and other time consuming hobbies and work through the hard times, the boring times, the lonely times and the times that people thought that you were a social misfit.  And when you get good at the piano and you get a little bit accomplished at the piano.  Don’t quit.  Redouble your efforts and you will go from good to great.”That pianists, Dino.  Just about the time when we begin to see progress in rebuilding our lives something in variable happens. Old Testament figures like Ezra and Nehemiah, New Testament Christians like Jesus and like Paul faced this problem, faced this situation and you and I will face it, too.  And that is, at the half way point we run into discouraging circumstances and discouraging people.  And people and circumstances team up to try to stop you in your tracks.  Don’t let it shock you. Don’t let it be something that you weren’t anticipating.  Jesus said in John chapter 16 and verse 33:These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace.A lot of people  hear that part, but they don’t read the rest of the sentence.In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.Did you get that?   In the world you will have trouble. In the world you will have tribulation.  In the world you will have trials.  In the world you will face difficult circumstances.  And when the forewarned opposition heats up as we continue rebuilding we have got a choice to make. I have got a decision to make.  I have decided to try to start changing my life.  I am obeying the Lord.  I know the Lord as my Savior, but now then I am setting about to let him have the lordship in my life.  I have turned around.“And, pastor, just as soon as I start to do that, that’s when the difficulties arise.”Well, you can choose to do one of three things.  Number one, you can give up and say, “What’s the use.”“Well, I tried.  I made a turn. But, you know, what’s the use?  Nobody is helping me.  Everybody is criticizing me. I’m just going to have to give up.”Or you can do number two.  You can slack up and you can say, “Well, not now.  Now must not be the time.  I’m just going to have to back off on this and not get so wild eyed about the whole thing and I am going to have to do this at a more paced manner.”Or the third think you can do—which is the correct thing—and that is we can look up and confess that we cannot do it alone.Here in Nehemiah’s book God has given us an example, an inspired true life example of what to do when discouraging opposition shows up in our journey to building a successful life.  How do we do it?  How do we defeat discouragement?  You defeat discouragement with tenacious faith.Voice: Hey, pastor Phil, you know, that’s really easy for you to say.  At the same time you don’t live in my world.  Every day I go to work. Guys criticize me for being a Christian.  You know, I do try to walk the walk and not just talk the talk all the time.  But, you know, they are after me.  They are slamming me.  They are bringing me way, way below down.  I get discouraged at work.  Well, not only that.  I’ve got other bomb throwers in my life.  They want to throw grenades of ridicule, grenades of malice; whether it be my family, my friends I just feel like sometimes they are all out to get me whether it be from my sister, my mom, my dad, my mother, even my wife.  The shrapnel of what they say tears at my spirit and, quite frankly, it is starting to destroy my soul.You know, I hear from them, too, “Oh, Bechtel, you’ll never change, you’ll never amount to anything. You never, you haven’t.”I just can’t take it anymore.  I don’t know what to do.  I can’t measure up.  It’s all fine and good what you say here in the Word and what we have learned in Nehemiah, but, you know, you don’t know about this because you don’t live in my world.Somewhere in this process of building our lives, rebuilding our lives, somewhere about half way to victory, discouragement sets in.  The people of our life and the stuff of our life begins to get in the way.  We begin to listen to the criticism. We begin to feel the pressure and as we have already stated when a person is motivated to rise up to repair their life Satan will always rise up to oppose those repairs.  Count on it.  Discouraged people abound in all walks of life at all ages of life and everyone’s life at some time or another. Don’t think we are talking about a couple of speed bumps along the way. No, indeed.  Doing the right thing for yourself, for your family, doing the right thing for your culture, it can be dangerous.  And only tenacious commitment and unyielding faith will keep you going.  Don’t get the wall half built and just quit.  Keep on going.“And so how, pastor?  What do I have to do?”Well, write it down in your sheet.  The first thing you need to understand and that is the first major point is that we need to anticipate discouragement.  You can attribute half the victory or half the defeat to the anticipation of an obstacle that you will encounter.A few years ago on one of our Indian treks that we do in the mountains we noticed that there was one man that was lagging behind and he seemed to really be afraid when we get on narrow mountain paths.  He would hug the mountain and move really slow.  Beads of sweat would pop out on his head.After a couple of hours on the second day of walking I finally asked him, “Are you afraid of heights?”And he said, “Yes.”And he was afraid of heights and he was very upset about not being informed concerning the dangerous heights included on the Andean mountain trek.  He was not from this church so I asked him and I said, “What were you told?”And he said, “Well, the way I understood it I was told it was as simple as taking a walk across the pasture.”I said, “I’m sorry.  This is the Andean mountain trek, you know, 20,000 foot mountains and so on.  And they are very tall.  And none of these mountains are like a pasture.”What he did not do is he did not anticipate the difficulty.  I want to tell you from the very start of everything that I say today that half the battle is being able to keep going when you come under attack is knowing that the attack is coming. Whenever you are making the right choices and following God in your life and you decide to rise up and build or you decide to make changes or you decide as we said last week to make a trip to the refuse gate and get rid of some of the things of your life so that you can begin the right things in our life.  Just as soon as you decide to do that, anticipate it, count on it, take it to the bank, you will be opposed.Aspiring pianists don’t know what they are really going to expect unless somebody shares it with them.  People headed for Marine boot camp are not really ready for what might come.  And, sadly, people trying to build and rebuild their homes and lives need to anticipate that there will be difficulty, there will be opposition.The first thing you are going to face—and write this down—is people may put you to derision. They may laugh at you and mock you.  And it is a very discouraging thing for people to make fun of what you are trying to do.  Ridicule and mockery is hard to take.A little by word for you parents when your children are learning how to do something and you have a daughter that is learning how to make a cake, don’t make fun of it.  You have got a son that is trying to learn how to mow the lawn and he can’t cut a straight line, don’t worry about it. Help him.  Don’t mock him.  Don’t make fun of him.But in this story we are talking about right here as we look at this, here are some people that are rebuilding Jerusalem.  They have gone back there to the walls and they are digging out of the rubble.  It is a difficult task in the first place. They have gone to this wicked web that they have weaved in their history and they are trying to pull the rubble out.  They are trying to take away the stones, put them back on the wall, build it up.  They are trying to do something positive.  And just as soon as they begin doing it their enemies show up and they begin to ridicule them and mock them.  And people will put you to derision.Sanballat the pagan represents the pagan world around us.  Many times foolish friendships do that.  We formed many friendships through our lifetime that we thought were friendships, but they weren’t. They were acquaintances and, perhaps, leashes.  Perhaps their lives were being spurred on in the evil they were doing by the life that you were living.  And so they weren’t really friends at all.  And we find out that when we begin to change and repentance begins to take place in our life and the wall starts coming up to half height, people that are enslaved by drink, people that are enslaved by drugs, harmful habits, those full of anger or those that have just decidedly anti Christian.  They begin to laugh. They begin to mock.  The Bible says that that person is a scorner and a mocker. And what should you do with them? Ignore them.  Just keep on building.  Just keep on going forward.  Just keep doing what the Lord has led you to do.  Just keep going for your future.Like Tobiah, the Ammonite.  Now, he was a distant family member that...he had decided he was going to rise up and cause them pain and cause them problem and ask they what is the use?  Why do you think you are doing that?  He should have been encouraging them, but he was discouraging them.  And so what do you do even when distant family members [?] you have tried this before.  You have done this before.  Why don’t you just give up?  You are who you are.  People don’t change.Well, people can change.  How many of you are witnesses to the fact that the grace of God changes people?  Will you raise your hand?  Me, too.  Oh, he does.  God’s grace is sufficient for any need and he changes people. He doesn’t just change our destination, he changes our disposition.  Let me say that to you again.  God is not only going to change our destination about where we are going to live in eternity, he will change your disposition.  He will take that sourness out. He will take that crankiness, meanness.  He will take away that disposition of attack away from you so that you can be a different person.The Bible says that in Christ all things are made new in 2 Corinthians 5:17.  “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” especially the disposition and the attitude of a person.Ands so people, they are going to mock you.  But that is not all.  And as we look at verse number seven and eight there:Now it happened, when Sanballat, Tobiah, the Arabs, the Ammonites, and the Ashdodites heard that the walls of Jerusalem were being restored and the gaps were beginning to be closed, that they became very angry, and all of them conspired together to come and attack Jerusalem and create confusion.What did they conspire to do?  Go on the attack.  They decided that they were going to do more that ridicule, mock and laugh at.  It wasn’t enough that they could just be the butt of a joke. That wasn’t enough. Now then they have got to go over there and do something physical. They have got to go over there and just make some real effort.I shared in the first service that I had a man in our church that while going through the Nehemiah series and had made some decisions, he is a man of character for man years, but he was working somewhere in a so called Christian boss told him, “Here is what I want you to do.  I want you to write down some numbers and I want you to do something crooked and I want you to do something that is a lie and I want you to help me line my pockets and line the pockets of this business by a little bit of fancy work there with some accounting.”This Christian member of our church says, “Nope.”  He says, “I can’t do that.  I cannot participate in that.  It’s wrong.”He appealed to him. He explained to him.  The boss—quote, unquote, a Christian—became very, very upset, fired him on the spot because he would not do it.Well, I am here to say that God took note of that and God is watching and God is going to watch over those that are his.  The Bible says that I have never see the righteous forsaken or his seed begging bread.  And God is going to take care of that person.but I want you to know that there are those out there will that will try to get you sidetracked.  People will put you in danger.  When words of ridicule are not enough, when words of mocking and jest are not enough they will come after you.There is at least one person that is after every one of us and that is Satan himself.  I have said it.  You rise up to make change, Satan will rise up to oppose you.  And how does he do it?  Well, one way he comes is like a roaring lion the Bible says in 1 Peter 5:8, full frontal attack, scare you to death, just come right at you trying to scare you.  That’s what these folks did. They came right at the children of Israel.Now, you have to understand this little rag tag group of people that are trying to rebuild this mammoth wall around this city.  You have got to understand this picture.  In your Scripture sheet that you have for your grace groups that you are going to study later there is a map right on the front of it and it shows the approach of these armies coming from these other places that were going to attack.  They were surrounded.How many of you have ever felt surrounded even when you are trying to do the right thing you feel surrounded by people that are not giving you much help?  Would you put...yes, that’s the way it is, isn’t it?  That’s the way they work. They were surrounded.  They were threatened. They were mocked, ridiculed, laughed at.  Now it is getting serious. “We are going to attack you.”Well, Satan is going to make a full frontal attack.  He is going to come like roaring lion and just try to scare you out of your wits.  If that doesn’t work he is going to do like he did in the Garden of Eden in Genesis chapter three. He is going to slither in.Imagine them working with those rocks and there they are working and here a snake sticks its head out here or there and scares them to death while they are working.Do you know Satan slips in? Satan slithers in? He slithered in to the Garden of Eden?  And do you know he even slithered in there to the garden where Jesus was praying before he went on to Calvary?   He slithers in. He tries to tempt and test and to discourage.  And that is the way he is.And then he does something else even more dangerous.  It is like a faithful friend or like an angel of light.  Satan likes to present himself—2 Corinthians 11:14.  And I have got to tell you that whenever you hear somebody that has been an acquaintance or a friend or even a distant family member with you, you are making changes, you have got your wall up to the half height.  You have got your life on the road to mend and you are starting to grow, you are in the Word of God. You are communicating with your family.  You have said no to a drug or said no to alcohol or you are changing, you are getting a hold of that anger.  All of the sudden some of the people that you have been around, that have been running with you, all of the sudden they look at you and they come along like this faithful friend, put their arm around you and say, “Hey, man.  Don’t got at this too hard.  Listen, you just, you know, you’re going to really discourage yourself and you just can’t do that.  And, you know, people don’t really change, they just start speaking to you and start talking to you like an angel of light,” like they are trying to really be your friend.  Well, that’s not the kind of friend that you need.You know what?  People are going to put your in danger.  People are going to put you to derision. Something else people are going to do—and this is such a difficult thing—is people are going to disappoint you.How many have ever been disappointed in anybody?  Could you raise your hand up?  Me, too.  How many people have ever been disappointed in you? Could you raise your hand up?  Yeah, me, too.  People disappoint us.This next one is really hard to take.  Look at verse number 10.  “Then Judah.”You say, “That’s only two words.”That’s right, but make sure you understand who Judah is.  Then Judah rose up and here is what Judah said."The strength of the laborers is failing, and there is so much rubbish that we are not able to build the wall."  And our adversaries said, "They will neither know nor see anything, till we come into their midst and kill them [notice the danger] and cause the work to cease."Verse 12:  “So it was, when the Jews who dwelt near them came, that they told us ten times, ‘From whatever place you turn, they will be upon us.’”Judah. Who was Judah?  Well, Judah is one of the 12 tribes.  In fact, Judah is the location in the tribe in which Jerusalem is located.  The city of Jerusalem, the rebuilding project is located in the territory of Judah and who are the people that were coming along to point out some things to them to discourage them?  They were their own relatives.Did you know people can be disappointing?  Do you know what they did?  The first thing they did was point out the problems in verse number 10.  I call them the rubble rousers.You say, “Rubble rousers.  Pastor, it is rabble rousers.”I know that, but for my purpose this morning it is the rubble rousers.  And what are they doing? Well, they are rousing them up about the rubble.  Here is what they said to them.  They said, “First of all, you just don’t have enough strength.  You have little strength.”Look at verse number 10. “Judah said, ‘The strength of the laborers is failing.’”  “We’re tired. We have been working on...look at all these people. They are just tired. They have got their own homes to take care of.”  Of course, that is what we are trying to do here. “They have got their own jobs. They have got other things.  They have got other issues. They have got other things going on.  Everybody is tired.  Why don’t you just take a break?”Can I tell you what Satan would like to get you to do in your road to recovery, in your road to growth, in your road to rebuilding your life?  Do you know what he would like to get you to do?  He would like to get you to take a spiritual vacation. Take a rest.You say, “What are you talking about? Aren’t we supposed to take a vacation?”Yep. Take a physical vacation.  Your body needs rest.  But don’t you even think about taking a spiritual vacation.You say, “What’s a spiritual vacation?”It’s a time when you decide that you don’t need to be in the Lord’s presence.  You don’t need to talk to the Lord.  You don’t need to read his Bible a little bit.  You don’t need to pray over it.  You’re just fine.  Everything is going to be ok.  You just can’t keep up this pace.  You need to back off and just take a rest, just take a vacation.  It is wearying.Well, the Bible says just the opposite. The Bible say that they that wait upon the Lord shall do what?  Renew their strength, “they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”But do you know what the world would like us to think?  “I mean, this whole spiritual thing, this whole God thing, this whole church thing, this whole living for the Lord it is just so cumbersome and it is just so wearying and it is just going to wear you out.”Folks, it is going to do just the opposite for your soul.  You never take a spiritual break.  You never take a spiritual vacation.  I can tell you of the shipwrecks of people and people’s lives that I have known that have taken a spiritual vacation. Let me just give you an example. I was talking to somebody in this church and I was talking to them and I said, “Say, you have decided you are going to walk away from your wife and walk away from your children.  You are going to abandon your home.  You are going to go do something else.  You have gotten involved with somebody else.  Let me just ask you one question.  I’m just curious about something.”“Ok, go ahead.”“Well here is my question.  In the process of going through this thing and being tempted and giving in to the temptation…”“Well, I don’t look at it as temptation.  I look it as I just want to be happy.”“Well, ok, however you want to look at it. In the process of doing that I have just got one question.  While you were thinking about it, while you were contemplating, while you were considering the sin, while you were considering leaving your wife, leaving your children, leaving your home, one question: Were you carrying on a daily relationship with God in heaven and fellowship with him through a little bit of Bible reading, a little bit of prayer and waiting before the Lord and seeking his guidance?”“Well, no.  I’ve got to be honest.  I really haven’t been doing...”I have never in my entire ministry—going on 29 years—I have never talked to one single person who has made life changing decisions that were destructive in nature who did so while he was on his knees.  You never take a spiritual vacation.  You just don’t do that.You say, “Pastor, what is this study all about?  What are you talking about in the book of Nehemiah?  How am I going to build this wall?”Not near as hard as you think.  But it is going to take tremendous tenacity.  You are going to have to build into your life.  Listen to your pastor.  You are going to have to build into your life.  You are going to have to build into your life the good habits of getting before God daily.You say, “Wow. That’s real legalistic and everything.”It is not any more legalistic than brushing your teeth everyday.  It is not any more legalistic than eating three meals a day.  It is not any more legalistic than going to sleep every night.  It is not any more legalistic than getting up every morning.  It is not any more legalistic than taking a bath every day.  There is nothing legalistic about it.  It just makes good sense that if you are going to have connection with God, know his will, have his protection, his guidance in your life you are going to have to be in contact with God.This is not the Christianity of the 21^st century.  The Christianity of the 21^st century is flash and splash and big stars and wonder and some guy over here with some big story in a book and all that kind of stuff and this seminar and that conference.And you say, “Pastor, don’t you ever you go to seminars?”I go to all kinds of them.  None of them build my inner being.  Only presence before the Lord can do that.  You are going to have to build it into your life.  And that is what we are talking about, building this wall.  People can put you in danger. People can disappoint you.  Even the people that you really do love and love you mistakenly can point out that you are tired, that you have little strength. Take a break.  They will point out that there is a lot of junk.  I call them the rubble rousers, remember.  They say, “Oh, man, your life is...you just got to be happier with small stuff. You just can’t expect that God is going to change all of your life.  How about if you just...”No, it is what we do is we make the assumption that I just got to be satisfied with just a very little bit of God’s will for my life and not a completely radical change in my life.  There is lots of junk.  It is a large task they said. The people are tired.Not only did they point to the problems, they were rubble rousers, the pointed to the opposition. They were trouble rousers.You say, “That’s not a word either.”But will you give me just a little license here this morning?  Rubble rousers and trouble rousers, the people who like to stir up trouble.  The men of Judah should have been working, but they were spending too much time looking at why they couldn’t build and conversing with the enemy about it.  They warned them 10 times.  “Oh, man, the enemy is strong. The enemy is coming.”They got to consider... you know what?  They spent more time contemplating failure than they did working on success.Do you know what losers do?  Losers worry about failing.  Do you know what winners do?  Winners plan on succeeding and they keep to the plan and they keep going forward.Do you know what Judah did?  He conversed with the enemy about defeat.  Do you know what Satan would like to do?  Get you off track, stop you from working, get you to take a spiritual vacation so he can sit on your shoulder and tell you, “You will never change.  You are never going to be different.  You are always going to be the same. You are a flunky.  You are a jerk.  You are a fool. You will never make it.”  He will just tell you that over and over and over.  And as long as you are listening you are not changing.And so they point to the opposition.  People disappoint you.  They point out problems.  They point to the opposition. And, folks, don’t listen to the riff raff of your life. They don’t care about you. They care about themselves.  They are against you and your change because it puts the pressure on them.Lots of people hate you because of the light that you shine upon them when you begin to change.  Do not listen to the people who think they make themselves brighter by blowing out your candle.You know it is a dog eat dog world out there and that happens every day in the work place.  It happens in schools. It happens on football teams and baseball teams.  Instead of rejoicing in somebody else’s success what do we think?  “Well, if they are successful, that means I have got to put them down in order for me to go up.”Do you know why people really have a hard time when somebody begins to change and their life starts taking order and all of a sudden God starts getting active in their life and where they were angry they are not so angry anymore and where they didn’t have self control they now have self control and where they used to be a drunk they walk away from it and where they used to be involved in all kinds of addictions and all kinds of behavioral difficulties?  They begin to change. Do you know why they get so upset and they begin to criticize?  Because, let me just say this to you.  As your life changes and we begin to be salt and primarily when we begin to be light, the light of our life casts light on their life.  Say it again.  The light of our life casts light on their life and light always shows up where the darkness is and it runs it away.Do you know what people have a hard time with when your life starts changing?  You are changing and they know that they should, too.  How many of you know what I am talking about?  Oh yeah.  Don’t let it stop you.  Don’t let it stop you.  You are going to do more to help them by you changing than by you staying like you were.Listen.  When God saves somebody in a family an that person becomes a new person in Christ, that family, even though it creates a rift in the beginning, that family is far closer to hearing the gospel and coming to Jesus because somebody got saved and somebody began to change in that family than if that person never would have gotten saved.And I will take it further.  If you are in your family and you have an extended family in which every one is going the wrong direction, you go ahead and make up your mind to serve the Lord with all of your heart because he can turn it around and he can use you as an influence to turn the light on in that family where all of the sudden yeah they will be angry, yes they will fight against you, yes they will criticize you, mock you, deride you, cut you out of the will. They may do all kinds of things. But sooner or later the light that you are shedding on them may draw them to Christ.Please don’t give up.  I have got to finish.  Listen to this verse of Scripture.  I love this.  Hebrews chapter 12, verse one:Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.Do you see that right there that there is a great cloud of witnesses?  I thought for many years that that meant that all the people in heaven are watching everything we do here on earth.  Man, wouldn’t that be embarrassing. No, I don’t believe that is what that is talking about. I believe that these are witnesses of the grace and goodness of God.  And I believe they are out there screaming and saying, “Oh, just tell them, Lord, tell them, Jesus, tell them, Holy Spirit.  Don’t give up.  Keep fighting.  Keep going forward.  Keep doing the right thing because it is worth it.  We are in heaven. We are in the Lord’s presence. It is unspeakable and full of glory and I cannot even describe it to you. And if you will just be faithful on earth the rewards are beyond wonderful in heaven.  Be faithful.”It is a cloud of witnesses that are saying, “Just keep on going.”Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to see these cheering crowds?  Wouldn’t it be great to hear the cloud of witnesses that have gone on?  They are witnesses of the fact that God is faithful.  Victory is worth the fight.  They know that tenaciously pressing forward will pay off in eternal rewards and earthly blessings.  And they say in a unified chorus, “Just keep running.”And to do so you have to deepen your commitment to reconstruction of your life, deepen your commitment to your home.Voice: How, pastor Phil?  How?  You say deepen my commitment and reconstruct my home and my life and I try.  But I can’t do everything that is asked of me.  I take kids to school in the morning.  I go to work, PTA.  I take kids to practice. We come home.  I cook.  I clean.  I do laundry.  I pray with my children.  I be a wife.  And that’s on an easy day.  Too many things are pulling me too many different directions.  And I know that those who have gone before are cheering, but sometimes I can’t hear it.  And I know, by faith I know that the victory will be worth the fight. But  sometimes I am too tired to stand, let alone fight.And I know you say we need to tenaciously press forward.  But sometimes I don’t even know how to press forward or what the fight even is.  But still I will try to press on, to fight the good fight, to take a stand.  But often I feel like a solitary warrior alone, uncertain of the battle plan, not even knowing how to begin.  So how, pastor Phil, how?How?  Write these things down on your sheet just as quickly as you can. We must deepen our commitment.  How do we do it?  How do we keep going forward?  Well, it is to remember that any one individual with the Lord on his side is not in the minority, but the yare in the majority.  Me plus God makes a majority in any situation.  God is fighting for us.  And that is the first thing we need to do is remember who fights for us.  Verse four and five talks about God fighting for us.  Verse number 15 says, “And it happened, when our enemies heard that it was known to us, and that God had brought their plot to nothing, that all of us returned to the wall, everyone to his work.”We have to remember that the Lord has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”  The Bible...we have to understand that God is good. He is good all the time to his children.  We have to understand that he is our strong tower. He is our hiding place.  He is our refuge.  He is the place of safety and those that run into him are safe.   And so we have to remember who it is that fights for us.  This rag tag group of people building a wall couldn’t build a wall if God had not been with them.  And I want you to know that God has put you in a world as if it were a river and the river is going one way and you are swimming the other.  And you cannot do it by yourself.  You have to remember who fights for you.The second thing you have to do is remain committed to the wall.  Verse number six mentions a little word that is irreplaceable.  It is not fun.  It is not enjoyable.  It is not the word we all want to hear, but it is the four letter little word, a dirty little word we think. And it is the little word “work.”  And that is that they returned to the work. They were dedicated to the work.And, folks, I just want to say to you in your relationships, in your homes as difficulty comes in relationships you must understand that it is not going to be three easy lessons and snap your finger and that is going to be the end of it and your relationship is going to be restored.  It is going to take work.  It is going to take diligence.  It is going to take humility.  It is going to take bowing before the Lord.  It is going to take keeping the best...what is best for you, for your family, for your loved ones and mine.  You have to remain committed to the wall.Next week’s sermon really, really zeroes in on that one.Then the next thing you have to do is you have to remind yourself of the cause of what you are doing in the first place.Do you know what the greatest lack of understanding is concerning the Christian home today?  And that is that God’s great purpose for the home, of course it is that we would have our needs met as human beings in the world.  Of course it is so we can bring godly offspring into the world.  But the real reason for a Christian home is so that the world could have a picture of the love that Jesus has for his church.  That’s right.  A Christian home is supposed to be the best illustration on planet earth of what the relationship between Jesus Christ and his church is.  And what was that relationship?  The Bible says that Jesus calls the church his bride and that he gave himself for her, that he washed her with the Word, that he bled and died for her, he sacrificed himself for her.Oh, it is that self sacrificial, full, no cost too great dedication that it takes to make a home work.  There is no cost too great.  There is no commitment that is too great to make the home work, to make your life change and to serve the Lord.Do you know what the real cause and real purpose of your home is?  Verse 14 talks about the Lord who is great and awesome. Do you know what the world needs to see?  It needs to see some homes that are built on the Word of God.  It needs to see some homes with great commitment one to another.  It needs to see some homes where we remember those words that we said before, a pastor, a priest, a minister when we said those words “I do” concerning, “Do you promise to keep only unto her, do you promise to keep only unto him?”We need to keep our promises. And we need to understand that the one who wrote down the promise and was present and was a testimony to the ceremony was God almighty himself.  He is great and he is awesome and God wants glory in our home.  And that is the place that he is seeking glory.And we remind ourselves of that cause.The next thing is—and this may be the most important of all—we need to reclaim the purpose of God in your home and be willing to fight for it.  Look at verse number 14.  “I looked, and arose and said to the nobles, to the leaders, and to the rest of the people, ‘Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, great and awesome, and fight for your brethren, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your houses.’”Oh, you know what?  I believe that we have just lost the fight.  I believe that there is not any fight left in us.  I believe that in the middle of our situations of our homes and our families and we see the difficulties, I think that flight has become far easier than fight.But I am here to tell you this morning that there ought to be a holy and ambitious fight in the heart of every man and in the heart of every woman.  You had better be ready to fight for your children.You say, “Well, what am I fighting against?”This culture would like to pervert your children.  Did you know that?  Did you know that this world...Hollywood would like to pervert your children and the culture of this world and maybe even the culture of the grade school and grammar school and high school where your children go to school. They would like to get them to conform to their image instead of the image of God.Have you got any fight left in you?  Do you have any will to fight for your children, for your homes?  Do you have any will to fight for your mates?You know, the very first thing I think about and we think about that is where is the enemy? You show me the enemy and I will fight him.People ask me all the time, “Pastor, are you aggressive?”Am I aggressive?  Yeah.  I am.  When I think about fighting for my children and fighting for my home and fighting for my family and fighting for my country and fighting for my nation and fighting for the Word of God, well, I want to...  “Where is the enemy?”  And we can talk about that.  Hollywood is an enemy.  And we could point at all of these different things but I am going to tell you the greatest enemy.  Listen to your pastor.  The greatest enemy that I am going to fight, the greatest enemy that you are going to fight...and if you are man here this morning the greatest enemy you are going to fight is the one you shave every morning because the Bible says that we sin when we are drawn away of our own what?  Lusts.  I am going to have to win the battle with self.  I am going to have to stop asking:  What is it is going to make me happy for the next five years?  And I am going to have to start asking myself:  What is going to be the best for my family for the next five years, 10 years, 20 years.  I am going to have to stop asking: Well, what would I really like to do with this money and how would I like to invest this money over the next five years?You better start asking: What would be the best thing for me to do for my family and for my children and for my...you had better start fighting the fight with yourself. Fight the fight of self indulgence.  Fight the fight of lustful thinking. Fight the fight of pornographic minds.  Fight the fight.  You are going to have to fight because Satan is going to put up a battle.Are you aware that you are going to build and battle the rest of your life?  You can never stop.  That is the last point.  I don’t even have time to look at on your sheet. But do you know what?  For the rest of our lives we are going to have to build.  Do you know what they did? They had to have a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other because the enemies were everywhere. The enemies came at them and they couldn’t lay down their sword just to build because if they did they would get stabbed in the back.  And they couldn’t lay down their trowel just to fight with the sword because if they did then there wouldn’t be any building going on.And so what do you have go to do?   You have got to fight the enemies of your soul at a continuous clip and then you have got to be building the right things into your life all the time. You never stop doing one to do the other and you never stop doing the other to do the one.  You never quit.  You are building and you are battling in your life for the rest of your life.Do you know that is what they did?  The enemy surrounded them. They came at them to attack them. They tried to test them unawares, but they did not do it because every man strapped a sword on his side and held a trowel in his hand.  And while some were working, others were watching.Are you understanding what I am saying to you this morning?  It is a full time task of building into your life the character of Jesus Christ and it is a full time task of being alert and watching the devil may want to slip in.Just about the time you think you have got the whole thin whipped and licked the Bible comes along with a verse, “If any man thinks he standeth, let him take heed lest he what?”“Oh, I’ve got that whipped, pastor. Everything is ok.  My kids are fine.  I’m fine. We’re all fine.  I’m just going to take a spiritual vacation.”You just left the door open. You just laid your sword down.“Pastor, what is this study all about?  What would you like us to go home with?”I want you to put the building block of tenacity in your heart.  I want you to tenaciously build the habit of coming before the Lord into your life.  I want you to not look for an excuse.  Don’t look for an excuse to miss your time with the Lord. You look for a reason to be with the Lord.  Don’t you let other people, don’t you let your schedule, don’t you let the business of your life...here is the best thing you could do.  I am going to tell you right now. The greatest thing on earth you could do to make sure you spend time with the Lord every day.  Shut that box off at about 9:30.  Go to bed so you can get up in the morning.  And spend a little bit of time.I have been saying this over and over, haven’t I?  Am I becoming a drum that is just sort of driving you people crazy?  I’m sure I am. But I want you to grow.  I want you to be built up so that when you pick up a sword to fight you will have something to fight with. You will have some strength.  I want you to build up your soul in the presence of God by seeing a little bit of what God’s Word has to say, by praying over what...and asking some questions.  “God, what does this mean?  God, what do you want me to do with it?  And God how can I put it in practice today?  Lord help me today.”Will you please tenaciously build the character of Christ in your life by going into God’s presence every day?  Will you tenaciously stay alert? Watch out for the devil because he is going to slip in a temptation when you are least expecting it.Would you bow your heads and close your eyes?Nehemiah 4:1-3  (All Scripture quotations are from the New King James Version of the Bible unless indicated otherwise).Nehemiah 4:4-10John 16:33Ibid.2 Corinthians 5:17 (King James Version)Nehemiah 4:7-8Nehemiah 4:10Nehemiah 4:10-11Nehemiah 4:10Isaiah 40:31 (King James Version)Hebrews 12:1-2Nehemiah 4:15Nehemiah 4:14Page  PAGE 1 of  NUMPAGES 19

Together We Build

Sermon Transcript

“TOGETHER WE BUILD”

Pastor Phil Winfield

Nehemiah 2:17-3:32

October 7, 2007

Grace Church of Des Moines, IA

4200 E. 25th StreetDes Moines, IA 50317

Website:  http://www.gracehome.com

Online Sermons:  http://gracehome.sermonaudio.com

We have been teaching from the book of Nehemiah and God has used it.  Peoples’ lives are being touched and changed including mine and I am just so thrilled that you are here to share with us once again today.  So if you have your Bibles open here is what we are going to do.  We are going to open it up to Nehemiah chapter number two.Well, we have been laying the foundation.  The first week we talked about the need to face reality.  No sense of trying to hide from the truth or going around it or trying to just forget about it.  Nope.  Face the reality of our lives.  Face the reality of our families, our community, our church, our culture.The second thing we had to do was realize that God has always given us the right position and we can always pray.  Pray before you do anything else.  Pray first, pray early, pray often. Pray that God would help you as you are facing the reality of your life.And then the third thing we learned was that we are not going to be able to go very far with fear.  Fear won’t help us.  We have to go through fear by faith.Somebody says, “Well, you know, I’m just so glad that I came to know the Lord Jesus as my Savior because he took all my fears away.”Well, that’s a great testimony. I wish I could give it.  I get scared to death sometimes.  I don’t know what the next step is and, boy, I’ll take next step by faith that God has spoken. And if we just do the next thing, but a lot of times it is a fearful step.  So we go on by faith.  Faith is hearing what God says and doing it.  And that is what we are supposed to do.And then last week we found out that we are going to have to communicate what is going on in our lives with those that it affects.  And we are going to have to make an investigation, get down to the details.  Take a look at it.  Rome wasn’t built in a day and our lives won’t be rebuilt in five minutes.  We are going to have to look at what is going on in our life.  We are going to have to look at the problem areas and find out what it is.  We are going to have to investigate. Then we are going to have to communicate to those that love us and that we love here is what God is doing, help me.  I need you, you need me.Now, the fifth week.  We are halfway through.  Here it is. Teamwork. That is what we are going to study today.  Teamwork.  We have to work together. And that is the key building block on your sheet.And the key opposition is going to be: Uninvolved and unavailable.  I am not involved. I am unavailable.  I can’t help with this project.  I can’t help with myself.  People are going to have to fix me.  I can’t do it.  Others are going to have to do it.  So we are not supposed to do that.Now, I have given a subtitle to this and you can write this on your sheet there.  The subtitle of Together we Build is “Don’t stay paralyzed.  Get organized.” And I want you to see in the Word of God, in Nehemiah chapter two, we haven’t stood and read yet, have we?  Have we read yet?  We didn’t read yet.  That was last service.  Stand to your feet, why don’t you, and let me read chapter two, verse 17.  Here is what it says.Then I said to them, "You see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lies waste, and its gates are burned with fire. Come and let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer be a reproach."  And I told them of the hand of my God which had been good upon me, and also of the king’s words that he had spoken to me. So they said, "Let us rise up and build." Then they set their hands to this good work.  But when Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite official, and Geshem the Arab heard of it, they laughed at us and despised us, and said, "What is this thing that you are doing? Will you rebel against the king?"  So I answered them, and said to them, "The God of heaven Himself will prosper us; therefore we His servants will arise and build, but you have no heritage or right or memorial in Jerusalem."Well, when you come to chapter three—stay with me now, don’t go anywhere—when you come to chapter three you have some of the more redundant reading that you will find in the Bible.  It is similar to 1 Chronicles chapter four, five, six and following. It is just...it is a redundant bunch of reading.You say, “Well, then, let’s just don’t read it. Let’s don’t study that.  Let’s go to something like John 3:16.”No, no.  We don’t jump stuff and God puts things in the Bible for a reason.  Now, this is the inspired, inerrant, infallible, unchanging Word of God.  He took space in this book, an eternal book, he took space to write down things in this book about who was building where and who was next to him and what they were doing and where they built and who didn’t put their hand to the work.Listen to God’s Word, chapter three, verse one, five verses only.Then Eliashib the high priest rose up with his brethren the priests and built the Sheep Gate; they consecrated it and hung its doors. They built as far as the Tower of the Hundred, and consecrated it, then as far as the Tower of Hananel.  Next to Eliashib the men of Jericho built. And next to them Zaccur the son of Imri built.  Also the sons of Hassenaah built the Fish Gate; they laid its beams and hung its doors with its bolts and bars.  And next to them Meremoth the son of Urijah, the son of Koz, made repairs. Next to them Meshullam the son of Berechiah, the son of Meshezabel, made repairs. Next to them Zadok the son of Baana made repairs.  Next to them the Tekoites made repairs; but their nobles did not put their shoulders to the work of their Lord.Drop down to verse number 12, if you would. “And next to him was Shallum the son of Hallohesh, leader of half the district of Jerusalem.”  Look at what it says.  “He and his daughters made repairs.”Jump over to verse 23. “After him Benjamin and Hasshub made repairs opposite their house. After them Azariah the son of Maaseiah, the son of Ananiah, made repairs by his house.”Drop down to 28: “Beyond the Horse Gate the priests made repairs, each in front of his own house.”Verse 29: “After them Zadok the son of Immer made repairs in front of his own house.”Drop down to verse 30. It says there, “After him Hananiah the son of Shelemiah,” and drop down to the bottom of the last phrase, “After him Meshullam the son of Berechiah made repairs in front of his dwelling.”Interesting where they worked.Would you bow your heads and let’s ask the Lord to bless.Now, Father, we could look at these lists of names and we could look at these redundant verses and we could say, “Well, that’s interesting.  Someday we’ll understand it.”  But you didn’t give it to us for someday.  You gave it to us now.  When you said that there were so many things that Jesus did that was in this world that all the books of the world couldn’t contain it, you didn’t include all of those things, but you did include this list.  There is something here. Help us to understand your Word and apply it to our heart in Jesus precious name.  Amen.Would you be seated?Do you know that in order to not be paralyzed by the fears and the problems of our life we need to get organized?  And that is exactly what happens in chapter three. Nehemiah was a master administrator.  God had given him that gift and he motivated the people.  He found out who could do what and how they could work and who could work with whom and they put these people to the task of building the wall.  It was a community project. Each one had work to do all of his one, but each one had a work that was interrelated to everybody else.  Sometimes we don’t see it that way, do we?We are building our life and we think that our life is our life and that is it and that’s all that matters and I don’t care what you do and you don’t care what I do.  I’m just going to build my life and don’t care if it hurts the rest of the world.  It doesn’t make any difference to me.Well, that is not the attitude that we are supposed to have.  Each one of these people, they were given a task and they get organized.Did you know today that people pulling together can get a lot more done than individuals pulling all by themselves?  Two people can get more done as a team than two individuals can apart.  “A threefold cord is not quickly broken,” the Bible says in Ecclesiastes. And when we can work together as a team and we can all pull together then what we can do is avoid pulling apart.And I have got something to say to you this morning about the many families that are here of this church.  I want you to know that I am the pastor.  I am the shepherd.  Better spoken, I am the under shepherd of this church, the chief speaker and pastor.  And I want you to know I take that very, very, very seriously.  Men and women decide that they are going to disrupt and tear up their homes because of selfishness and because of lack of understanding of the project God has in process and so they decide they are going to just divorce their wives or divorce their husbands.“Let’s start all over, get a new start.  After all God wants me to be happy and that is the most important thing in life is for me to have what I want and be happy and I know God always wants me to be happy. So I’m just going to go that direction.”And so they just make choices.  I want to tell you that I am not the chief shepherd of this church, but I am the under shepherd.You say, “Well, who is the chief shepherd?”Do you have an answer to that for me?  Who is the chief shepherd of this church?Jesus Christ.Peter spoke about it. He said, “I am just an under shepherd.”  Paul explained that he was an under rower.  He was an under rower.  That’s what he was.  He was underneath in the galley and he was rowing at the behest and the calling of the one who is beating out the time. That’s all I am.  The one who is leading this church, he better be the one leading this church, is the Lord Jesus. And if he is not leading this church we don’t have a church.  We have just got an organization, a congregation of people that are coming together misguided, misled and without purpose.But I am the under shepherd.  I am telling you as the under shepherd I am worried about a lot of families in our church because if they don’t come together they are going to pull apart.  And we are all that way.I just heard this story read this week.  You know, this is football season.  I kind of get into college football, high school football.And, by the way, Tennessee really did well this weekend.  I just want to let everybody know that.  They just really, really did well.But anyway, I read and I thought this would really get you the idea.  How many of you know who Paul Bear Bryant is?  Any of you guys? Sure you do.  Paul Bear Bryant, coach at Alabama, well, since they came over on the Mayflower almost.“But I am just a plow hand from Arkansas,” he said, “But I have learned how to hold the team together and how to lift some men up and how to calm some men down until there is finally one heartbeat together, a team, where we are committed to one another.  Then there are just three things I would ever like to say.  If anything goes back it is my fault.  If anything goes semi good then we did it together.  And if anything goes really, really well, then you guys get the credit.  That’s what it takes to win football games.”And I am going to tell you. If we could get off the self centered mentalities of our lives it would make all the difference in our homes and in the workplaces where we work.  When it goes bad it is my fault.  When it goes ok we did all right.  When it goes really, really great give other people the credit.And so he learned that.And so what we are supposed to do is we are supposed to not stay paralyzed.  We are supposed to get organized.  We are supposed to pull together like one heartbeat working  together for what God wants us to do.I want to look, now, at these recovery workers in this chapter three. We are not going to read every verse of it, but I would encourage you to do that.  It is very interesting some of the side comments that you will find in there.  But I want you to look at them and the first thing I want you to know from this passage of Scripture, if we are going to rebuild our lives, if we are going to just keep building, we are going face reality and we are going to pray and then we are going to have faith and we are going to do the initiation because of investigation.  And then we are going to have teamwork and work together. Then here are the elements that are going to be involved.The first thing is that recovery and rebuilding calls for participation.  Write that down.  Participation. Every one working.  And there are several thoughts I would like to give you under that and that is that we as individuals need other people.  You show me the person that thinks he doesn’t need anybody, he doesn’t need anyone else, he is a Christian, he is all ok by himself.  All he needs is just, “Well, I’m all right.  I’m saved and I know the Lord and I read my Bible.  I just don’t need anybody else.”Well, they are not investigating the Scriptures.  In Nehemiah they could have done a tremendous job at their own wall. They could have built their own wall and could have tuck pointed every brick and I mean it could have been perfect and that wall could have been perfect, but if you look next door and his wall is completely absent then have you kept out the enemy, have you protected the wall?  We need each other.  Listen.Listen to this.  1 Corinthians chapter 12, verse 12.  “For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ.”  And here is the catch.  Here is the clincher.For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body––whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free––and have all been made to drink into one Spirit.  For in fact the body is not one member but many.And that is exactly the way that the body of Christ is supposed to operate.  That is the way families are supposed to operate. That is the way businesses are supposed to operate and organizations. They need each other.  We need other people.We cannot say, “I don’t need anyone.”  It is an impossibility.  We can’t function without them.The other thing is that other people need us.  Write that down.  Other people need us.  Ephesians chapter four, verse 15 and 16 says,Speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head––Christ––  from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.Other people need us.I know people that come to church on a need to basis.  They come to church and they become part of the congregation. They participate when they have a need.  When things are going well and when things are going ok and, you know, they can just carry on by themselves, well, that’s fine.  “I just, you know, I’ll go to church at Christmas, Easter, a few other time during the year and that will be it.  And I’m fine.  You know, but if I run into trouble I know that that godly bunch of pastors on pastor Phil’s staff and I know that those wonderful deacons and elders and those youth workers and all of the volunteers in the youth department and all of those children’s directors and leaders and parents, I know that I can go over there and talk to them.  They are going to care about me. They are going to love me.  And so I know that when I need it I can go over there.”Well, that’s a wonderful thing. It is wonderful to know that there is somebody that is going to have a sympathetic ear who is going to weep with those that weep and rejoice with those that rejoice.  That is wonderful that we know that.  But did it ever occur to you that it is a two way street?  Did you know that we don’t only come to church when we need help?  But did you know that we come over here not on the basis of need, but we also come because we are here because other people need us.  You like your hand to be shaken Sunday morning?  Then you better go over and shake somebody else’s hand because they like it, too.I had a family quit this church because they saw me in public.  I didn’t see them.  They saw me.  They were convinced I saw them, ignored them, went the other direction.  They said, “Well, if that is the way that pastor is then I am never going to go back to that church anymore because he snubbed me in public.”Well, I didn’t see them. My question is, if they saw me why didn’t they come running up to me and say hello to me and shake my hand?  People come to church.“You know, I went to that church and that was the meanest bunch of people. They were so unfriendly. They just didn’t help anybody because I came in that church and they didn’t shake my hand.  They didn’t help me find the...I’m telling...I’m just not...”Do you know what?  Do you know what we ought to do?  We ought to go out of our way to be as friendly as we can be personally because he that hath friends must show himself friendly.  Isn’t that simple?  Just go out of our way to be kind to other people, to help other people.Other people need us.  And we can’t say that no one needs me.That ought to be enough reason right there for us to just get involved and get involved in the groups, get involved in studying on Sunday morning.  By the way, if you don’t get in a group you are missing half this sermon.  You are missing them every week because the most of this passage of Scripture talks about the gates and I’m only going to talk about one of all the gates that are mentioned.And so we need each other.  You need to be involved with other people.  We cannot say, legitimately, “No one needs me.”Do you know?  I am a fanatic of the V-8 engine.  I love...I have got a friend in this church, brother Jack Zimmer, that has got a Chevy GT.  Jealous is not the word for me about that guy.  I’m just kidding.  But he has this Chevy GT and he just got it and there is nothing sweeter.  The only thing that sounds greater is a philharmonic orchestra than a V-8 engine when it is running right.  He steps down on that thing and I mean, boy, it purrs.You know, I am not a very groomed sort of person.You say, “What are you talking about?”To get my V-8 Chevy pickup truck away from me gas is going to have to get to about six dollars a gallon.  I’m sorry. I just...you know, I love to be able to mash it and to take off.  I haven’t had any tickets, folks.  Do not make assumptions, all right?  Most of the policemen know me by name, but I have not had any tickets.Now, listen to me.  A V-8 engine is a wonderful thing if all cylinders are firing.  But you pull a couple of plug wires or you, you can drop a couple of lifters or something like that and that thing is not working and I am telling you there is nothing more pathetic than that and I want you to know that this church, Grace Church and every church, your family, your business, your organization, whatever you are involved in, if everybody is participating then you are going to have something magnificent.  But if only a few are doing it you are going to have problems.  And in homes, which is my key area of concern, in homes upon which society itself is built, if we are not pulling together, we are pulling apart. And if everybody is individualistic and selfish and only thinks that this home is about what makes me happy instead of how I can do those things that are the best for my family, for my children, for my future, if I make decisions in light of my past record, in light of my present circumstances, in light of my future hopes, if I would do that then it would make all the difference in the world. We have to pull together.  We have to participate.  We belong to each other.Romans 12:4-5 says,For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another.We cannot say, “My life does not matter.”  You just can’t say it.  You can’t say, “I don’t need anybody.”  You cannot say, “Nobody needs me.”  And you cannot say, “My life does not matter.”  It is impossible...not and be a Christian because God’s Word says just the opposite.Now, we can’t say something else.  We cannot say, “I don’t do windows.”You say, “Is that in that Scripture?”No, and it’s not in the sermon either, but I am adding it.You say, “What do you mean by that?”Well, look at verse number five.  It is interesting, isn’t it?  Look at verse number five.  It says, chapter three, verse five, “Next to them the Tekoites,” which that’s where Amos was from, “the Tekoites made repairs; but their nobles did not put their shoulders to the work of their Lord.”Do you notice that?  Sometimes I think people get it in their mind when there is a task to accomplish, when we come together as a church family or we come together as a family, we don’t understand that it is the work of the Lord.  You know what?  We have missionaries that are all over the world?  When I say let us be faithful in giving so they can stay there some of you say, “Well, that preacher just wants my money.”I don’t want your money.  I want these people to be able to stay on the job in far away places preaching the Word of God and so we need to be faithful in giving. It is the work of the Lord.But it says the nobles didn’t lay their shoulder to it.  It actually says they wouldn’t stick their neck out. That’s what it actually means.  They would not...the nobles wouldn’t get involved.  The common man, they said, “Ok.  Tell me where to grab hold.”  And so they were organizing, they were putting people to work and I mean there are...you read the passage, jewelers, goldsmiths do it, perfumers do it, women do it, men do it, young do it, old do it, everybody gets involved, but there is this crowd that just stands over there.Have you ever watched ants?  Do you know that if you watch a crew of ants doing something there is always a big crowd watching?  Do you know that in a beehive that everybody has to do something?  And even though only half the hive goes out every day the other half stays inside of the hive and does nothing but bat their wings so that it keeps it 10 degrees cooler than it would be if they didn’t?  Think about that.  We are supposed to participate.  Nobody can say, “I don’t do windows.”  Nobody can say, “I just don’t do it.”You know, I have several thoughts about why these nobles didn’t want to do anything.You say, “Pastor, does everybody in your church serve?”No, but that’s our goal.You say, “Pastor, does everybody in there lay their hand to the plow?  Does everybody grab hold, does everybody do something?  Is everybody pulling together?  Is every member of your church a minister?”Well, I wish I could say so, but it is our goal.  I believe every church member, I believe every attender at Grace Church needs to be in a worship experience like this.  You need to be in a learning experience like a small group and you need to have a place of service to the body of Christ because you have been so gifted by God in heaven to serve the body.Then you need to be a witness to the world.  Now, listen to me.  No, not everybody is doing something and I have got suspicions about why they don’t.These nobles, first of all, they weren’t used to being accustomed...they were not accustomed to working alongside of the people who were getting their fingers and their hands dirty, were they?You know, I love this church.  I love to come here because you have got everything from three piece suits for Heart Shraftner and Marks all the way down to shorts, flip flops and a pull over.  And thank God for a church that we just want you.  I don’t care anything. I just want you to come to church and hear the Word of God.  Aren’t you glad for a place of grace.  Just come to church.  Just come.  Come to church.And, by the way, bring friends.  Don’t tell them how to dress. Tell them to come. Just get them here.  Let them come to church and hear the Word of God.But I have got a sneaking suspicion these nobles weren’t accustomed to working alongside what they might consider lower classes of people.There is something else about these nobles.  They may have been afraid to stick their neck out.  That’s what it actually means in that passage.  They were nobles.  They weren’t going to get down and lay their shoulders to the work of the Lord because, I believe, if you just let me whisper it to you, I believe they thought there might be financial ramifications.You say, “What?”I mean, I think they were afraid to really get down and get dirty and get with it and make a commitment and say, “There is the wall. It needs to be rebuilt for the glory of God.  Not mine, but thine. Not my will, but thy will.  I want to work on rebuilding this wall for the glory of God.”  I am sure that these nobles—we are going to find them later—they had business dealings with all of the people that were around them and they were afraid of what it might cost them in the greater picture of things. There are a lot of Christians that are afraid to come clean with God and grow because they are afraid, they are afraid of what it will cost them in their pocket.The great sign of Satan that many Christians are bowing down to is the sign of the dollar bill. It decides everything. It decides where they will live, how long they will stay there, where they will move, what they will do.  It determines their level of spirituality.“Well, I would never...I would never think about lying on that form. I am going to turn in my boss.  I’ll tell you.…”“How about for $10,000...”“Well, I’m never going to do it.”“How about $20,000?”“I would never...”“How about $100,000?”“Well, I think the Lord might forgive me for that.”You know, these nobles wouldn’t put their shoulders to the task.  We’re supposed to do that.  Families can’t survive if everyone doesn’t do their part.  Roles in families are very important.Now, please keep your tomatoes in your bags, knives, daggers, bows and arrows, just please let me say this without being killed. I am just a messenger.  I am not making the message.  Do you know that men...the Bible says in Ephesians chapter five that men have been given t their families to create an environment of unconditional love at home?  That’s right.The Bible says, “Therefore men ought to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it.”  Love their wives.  Now, that doesn’t mean you love your wife like a tool, you love your wife like a manipulation, you love your wife to get her to do what’s going on and if that tool doesn’t work you pick up a different one.No, no, no.  Men have the role of creating an environment of love in their home where they live.  In other words your address is one thing and your home is a place of love unconditionally where you work and live together and men it is our responsibility.Second of all, women have a role.Oh, here is where I get in trouble.  Here is where I just absolutely reveal my counter cultural thoughts.Women are here to provide help for the man to create the environment that is loving and to nurture it.Adam was a flop until Eve came along. And Eve’s great purpose was to help Adam accomplish what it was that God had called him to do.  Women are here to provide help for the man to create the environment and to nurture it.There is a third thing. Children are here to perpetuate and not hinder the process of a home glorifying God because God intends for those that come to know him and have children, according to Malachi, to put off godly offspring.And I want to tell you the greatest detriment that could happen to a family to prevent godly offspring from coming into the world and growing up loving God is for that family to decide to disintegrate and go their own way because of personal preferences, discomforts.  Instead of working out, they find a way out.  Instead of working together in love, they give up.Children are here to perpetuate and not hinder.You say, “Well, why would you put it that way?”Well, because—here we go again, pastor Phil, old guy telling you parents that your children cannot be in charge of your family to set the agenda for your family.  They don’t have the experience. They don’t have the understanding. They don’t have the wherewithal.  They don’t have the calling of God.  They don’t have the intellectual ability at the points in their lives to set the agenda for your family.Can I say it once and again and once and forever?  Parents, you are totally free to be parents.  Parent your children.  Lead your children.  Plan your homes.  Love them.  Care for them.  Be there for them.  Enjoy them. Have fun with them.  But be in charge of your home. That one statement will change America.Be in charge of your home. You are free to be in charge.Let me hurry. Recovery calls for cooperation.  Everybody working together.  That is the key phrase that is used in this passage of Scripture over and over. It says next to them, next to him.  Isn’t that amazing?  They actually could be right next to somebody and work in concert.  Wouldn’t that be great if families were working together so well that they just didn’t pull against each other?  Wouldn’t be great if...how many of you...you have got to be honest within your...you know, from time to time in your home it is hard to figure out if you are on the same page.  Sometimes you are wondering if we are even in the same book.  Some of you think you are in different libraries.  Be honest.Come on. Raise your hands up.  I mean, it’s just...how many...boy we have got to come together or we are going to come apart.  We have got to pull together.  We have to participate together and then we have to cooperate together.What would a church look like?  What would a church look like where everybody was truly working together?  What would a family look like where there was a common goal, a common direction, a common purpose and that was the glory of God and that was the rearing of the children and the preparation of those children for the world in which they are going to live?I didn’t say this in the first service, I am going to say it right now.  Do you know that God does not grade on a curve?  Are you aware of the fact that God does not have a floating standard of holiness and righteousness according to the culture in which we live?  Did you know that? Did you know that just because the world is winding around in a great circular motion toward degradation and not even knowing who God is, do you know that the standard of God does not change just because culture does?  Are you aware of that?  And are you aware that we, as leaders of our family, need to set the example for our children of what God would want and not what the world dictates?What would a family look like?  What would a community look like?  Well, we have to understand that we have to cooperate because we are working for the same purpose, the much needed repairs.Everybody understands in a home when a father or a mother or some child in the home is off track going the wrong direction. So don’t let a child that is in trouble divide the mom  and dad or a child that has a sickness divide the mother and father.  Don’t let the wife get into a sickness and let that divide the family.  Don’t let there be financial reversal and let that be the dividing...No, no, no, no. Come together.  You need each other more than you ever have.  Please be careful about blaming each other about what is going on in a family.  Pull together or you will come part.  We must cooperate.  We must work together.  The same purpose is to make the needed repairs.  We have the...and we are working for the same person.Ultimately we need to repair our lives and homes so that the Lord’s name will not continue in reproach. And, by the way, that is what God is interested in. He is interested in homes that give him glory.  He is interested in churches that give him glory.  He is interested in organizations and businesses that will give him glory.  He is interested in people that will point others to him by the way they do things.  We are working for the same purpose. We are working for the same person.  We need parents and we need teachers and we need preachers and husbands and wives and friends, we need everyone to give their best to the cause, helping to recover peoples’ lives and reclaiming the glory of God.Finally, and probably the heaviest and the most important of anything I am going to say, this is weighty. Do you know what worth is?  When we say that Jesus is worthy it means he has substance. He has weight.Well, this is a worthy statement I am going to make right now.  It carries tremendous weight.  Put stars around it.  Put big exclamation points behind it.  This is something that is huge.  I want you to see it with me in verse number 23.  I’ll tell you what it is in just a second.  It says in verse 23, it says, “After him Benjamin and Hasshub made repairs opposite their house.” And then later in the verse, “Ananiah, made repairs by his house.”Verse number 28: “Beyond the Horse Gate the priests made repairs, each in front of his own house.”Verse 29: “...in front of his own house.”Verse number 30: “...in front of his dwelling.”Recovery calls for participation. Recovering calls for cooperation.  Recovery calls for the right location.“Ok, pastor, what is the right location for rebuilding and recovery?”Do you know where they worked?  Do you know what they did?  He put them to work in their own homes, right in front of their own houses, right there with those people that they had the greatest amount of influence over.It calls for the right location.  It is so important for us to understand—and I want to say this loud, clear and long—we are most responsible for our own house.  We are most responsible for our own house.I am the under shepherd of this church. Brother Chris and brother Paul and brother Chuck and Jonathan and Josh and Carla and many others are helping on this leadership team along with a group of lay elders that...the best group of lay elders that God ever gave a pastor.  I am here to tell you this morning that my number one job is not pastoring this church.  My number...the place where I am going to be most held responsible for in my life is not for this group of people.  Now, let me just say this. Hebrews said, “Take heed and consider your pastors because they have to answer for your souls.”Please don’t let me when I call you on the phone ask you where you have been, why you have not been in church.  Don’t get mad at me.  Please when I call you on the phone and you are a man or a woman and you are going down the wrong path and you have decided that you are going to find more happiness outside of your home than inside your home and you just know God wants you to be...please don’t be mad at me if I call you on the phone and plead with you and beg you and cry over you and beg you not to go that direction.  Please don’t be upset because the Bible...God has given me the responsibility of watching for your soul.  I am going to answer for you.But I am going to answer for Philip and Sherry and Amber, for their spouses and their children far more than I am going to answer for you.  Each one built in front of his own house.  Do you know the place that you are the most responsible in this world?You say, “Well, I messed up.  I tell you, I wish I could go back and turn the clock back.”Listen, the Bible says he can restore the years that the canker worms have eaten. He can give you back those...he could start it all over again. The first thing to do is to pray.  Get on your knees and pray for those children that you didn’t rear the right way. Get on your knees and tell God almighty. Fast for them and pray for them and tell God that, “Ok, I messed up, but God you can reclaim my children.”We are the most responsible for our own house.Second of all we are most effective in our own home.  That is where you are more capable.  You are more capable and you are more effective with your own family than you are anybody else.  Why?  Because you have a vested interest. God gave them to you. They are your family. They are not somebody else’s family. Moses learned this.  He was the Savior of the Jews. He is on his road to Egypt. He is going to Egypt and when he gets there he is going to be the Savior. He is going to set those people free.  And on the way down there God met him in a wayside place, Exodus chapter four, he met him in a wayside place and was going to kill Moses because he failed with his son.You mean he put his one son...the responsibility to circumcise his son above all the people of Israel? Absolutely, because God—you hear me and you hear me well—God can raise up another deliverer for his people, but he cannot raise up another father for his son.  God could raise up another person to build bridges and buildings, but he can’t raise up another father for your son.  He could raise up another person to type letters and send them out of the workplace.  But he cannot raise up another mother for your children.Are you listening to me?I am so counter culture.  I am so opposite of the...but let me tell you something.  How is our culture doing?  How are we coming?  How is that working for us?Are you listening to me this morning?  The weightiest thing I am going to say to you before you go home is that we have got participate.  We have got to cooperate. But we have got to get in the right location.You say, “Pastor, does that mean that we don’t ever work in the church or serve in the church?”You know better than that.“Pastor, I thought you were a missionary.  You are worried about people all around the world.”I am.  I took my family to another country for 13 years to do that very thing.  But I didn’t’ do it without my family.Would you bow your heads and close your eyes? Jeremiah 2:17-20  (All Scripture references are taken from the New King James Version of the Bible unless otherwise indicated).Nehemiah 3:1-5Nehemiah 3:12Ibid.Nehemiah 3:23Nehemiah 3:28Nehemiah 3:29Nehemiah 3:30Ibid.Ecclesiastes 4:121 Corinthians 12:121 Corinthians 12:13-14Ephesians 4:15-16Romans 12:4-5Nehemiah 3:5Ibid.Nehemiah 3:23Ibid.Nehemiah 3:28Nehemiah 3:29Nehemiah 3:30Page  PAGE 1 of  NUMPAGES 16

Investigate and Communicate

Sermon Transcript

“INVESTIGATE AND COMMUNICATE”

Pastor Phil Winfield

Nehemiah 2:11-20

September 30, 2007

Grace Church of Des Moines, IA

4200 E. 25th StreetDes Moines, IA 50317

Website:  http://www.gracehome.com

Online Sermons:  http://gracehome.sermonaudio.com

And so if you have your Bibles there, open to Nehemiah chapter two.  We have been going through this series and we found that just as Nehemiah was going to rebuild the walls in Jerusalem, we need to do a little rebuilding in our own lives.  And the very first thing that we found out is that in order to get started at rebuilding our lives we have to do two words, number one, read it with me, what we do we have to do?  We have to face reality.Then, over here, after we face reality we don’t just go fix everything.  We don’t just go get busy trying to straighten everything out.  No, before we talk to men, before we talk to others we need to talk to God.  And so the second thing we do...I don’t know if you can see it.  The two things that God has given us concerning prayer is that we are in the right position to pray. And so it is, number one, face reality and, number two, say it with me...prayer and position.  And the position part of that is God has you exactly where he wants you to be able to make the changes you and I need to make.Well, as we do that, as we face reality and we start making changes, the next thing we are going to find out is that it is a fearful thing.  It is always fearful to confront the situations and the people of your life and especially when we have caused them trouble.  And so fear has got to be confronted with one word.  And what is that one word?  Faith.  And so faith carries us through the fear.Today what we have to do is we just can’t make an assumption that we know all the details that are involved.  As we read this passage in just a moment you are going to find out that Nehemiah had a general idea of what he would need and what it would be like to build the wall, but when he got to Jerusalem he had to do something else.  He had to take time and he had to rest and then he had to do an investigation to find out exactly what was going on.  Before he said a word to any other man or shared it all, what was in his heart, he investigated.  He got down to the details.  He knew that there were some particular issues that he was going to have to face.We have to do the same thing.  We have to investigate and we have to communicate what we have investigated. So, once you face the reality of your situation in life don’t despair. Take it to God in prayer.  Once you have begun to pray and share it with the Lord in faith, then proceed with faith in spite of your fair.  And then, today, don’t hesitate, but initiate the change.One Bible story that illustrates this so very well is Joshua when he stood on the plains of Moab and he looked across the Jordan River at the land of Canaan. It was the land of promise.  It is the land to which the children of Israel had been directed and heading for quite some time. And so as they were getting ready, looking across to the land of Canaan, they had been from Egypt through the wilderness, learned many lessons and when they looked across that Jordan they had one thing left to do and that was they needed to wade in, they needed to step in the water and follow God’s leading. They had to fight off their fears by faith.  They had to walk right into the water following the ark of God and guess what happened? When they took those first few steps of faith they found out that the waters and the rivers of difficulty moved back.  Circumstances changed when the took steps forward.Well, what do we find Nehemiah doing?  Well, we find him doing exactly the same thing. He had arrived to Jerusalem.  He took a good lingering first hand look at the situation before him and then knowing what needed to be done, he shared the vision.Listen to the reading of this passage of Scripture and I believe you will be encouraged.I went to Jerusalem, and after staying there three days  I set out during the night with a few men. I had not told anyone what my God had put in my heart to do for Jerusalem. There were no mounts with me except the one I was riding on.  By night I went out through the Valley Gate towards the Jackal Well and the Dung Gate, examining the walls of Jerusalem, which had been broken down, and its gates, which had been destroyed by fire.   Then I moved on towards the Fountain Gate and the King’s Pool, but there was not enough room for my mount to get through; so I went up the valley by night, examining the wall. Finally, I turned back and re-entered through the Valley Gate.  The officials did not know where I had gone or what I was doing, because as yet I had said nothing to the Jews or the priests or nobles or officials or any others who would be doing the work.  Then I said to them, "You see the trouble we are in: Jerusalem lies in ruins, and its gates have been burned with fire. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, and we will no longer be in disgrace."  I also told them about the gracious hand of my God upon me and what the king had said to me. They replied, "Let us start rebuilding." So they began this good work.  But when Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite official and Geshem the Arab heard about it, they mocked and ridiculed us. "What is this you are doing?" they asked. "Are you rebelling against the king?"  I answered them by saying, "The God of heaven will give us success. We his servants will start rebuilding, but as for you, you have no share in Jerusalem or any claim or historic right to it."I can imagine what it as like when he did—Nehemiah, that is—began to communicate with the people and as he communicated found out that in his audience that there were those that were going to stand up against him.  And that is probably one of the most amazing things of the Christian life is to find out when you decide to repent, you decide to start changing, you decide to start doing things that are right.  There are always people that seem to stand up and oppose you.  It seems nonsensical.  It seems unreasonable, but there is always that group that will stand up and ridicule and mock and they will always stand up and oppose.Well, we are going to end up with that thought.  But I want to start off by looking back, now, at the passage and I want to talk to you about how to communicate a vision for change.I love this part at the very first here, it says in verse 11, “So I came to Jerusalem and was there three days. Then I arose in the night.”  I love this because when he got there the very first thing he did was not after taking such a long trip just jump right into the work and start trying to fix everything. That is not what he did.  Do you know what the very first order of business was for Nehemiah when he got to Jerusalem?  Take a nap.  Basically, he needed to rest.  He took three days to do it.You say, “Wow, that was...he must not have been very urgent.”Oh, he was very urgent about doing the thing. His predecessor, Ezra, had done exactly the same thing.You say, “Well, why is that?”Well, because that trip, that 800 miles or so from Susa all the way to Jerusalem was across very dangerous territory.  Remember they were riding camels and, perhaps, on the backs of donkeys and walking. They might have made eight, 10, 12 miles a day.  So it may have been weeks and months even before they actually got there. And so when they got there they were tired.  They were dirty.  They were dusty. They were hungry for something a little better than what they were getting in their camp.  And so when he got there the first thing he did was he took...and he took some time and he rested.And I just wonder this morning how many of you would love to have a three rest.  Anybody out here just to have three days to do nothing but just rest?Well, I would, too.  I think I might be one of those in here that needs it as much as the next guy, but you know what?  God made us that way.  And I want to say to everybody here, in the Old Testament when we were studying the Ten Commandments, one of those Commandments was, “You will remember the sabbath day and keep it holy.”  And what were their assignments on the sabbath day?  What was it that they had to do?Well, there were a few things they had to remember and they had to think about God.  But primarily the number one thing they were to do on the sabbath was nothing.  They were supposed to just stop.  And we are made that way.So here is what I want you to do. Go to your boss, or, if you are the boss, I want everybody to just tell him, “Look.  The preacher said that I need a three day rest.” So just tell him that tomorrow and see how far you get with that.  I doubt you are going to get very far, but, you know, just go ahead and tell him.Well, here is the deal. He got to Jerusalem. He was tired.  He took a rest.  He needed his wits about him.  He needed to be able to really find out and investigate what was going on there. I told you a moment ago, before he ever went to Jerusalem while he was still in Susa he made...he did some meditating, he did a lot of thinking. He thought, “Now, if these walls are burned down...if the timbers are burned and the walls are destroyed then I am going to need...well, I’m going to need...I’m going to need all those stones and more and I am going to need new timber and I need something from the king’s forest and I am going to need.…”  He started talking about all the things he needed. But do you know what?  He was speaking in general terms.But now then he is there and he takes a rest.  Then he rises up in the middle of the night and he takes a walk.  I call it the midnight ride of governor Nehemiah.  He got a very up close and personal inspection going where he looked personally at the condition of the city and now, then, he is going to be able to lay out his strategy a whole lot better. He is going to be able to communicate what he needs to do, but he gets up and he takes a midnight ride. He didn’t tell anybody what was going on until he knew the depth and he knew the details of what was going to have to be done.  And so that is exactly what he started to do.And on your sheet there, your Scripture sheet, write a few things down. And the first thing we have to do is we have to recognize, firstly, the ruins of our life.Somebody might say, “Pastor, I am amazed that you would go to Nehemiah and that you would teach these kinds of things.”And I have a real simple for and that is the Bible says that, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect [that is mature and completely] furnished unto all good works.”“And so why would you...what are you saying?”I’m saying that God has put these things in the Bible to teach us something and to apply to our lives.  This is application preaching.You probably wonder, “Pastor, what is your whole way of thinking?”Well, if I haven’t led you through a thought process that requires a decision or a commitment I have not preached a sermon.  And so from week to week that is exactly what I do.  I look at God’s Word. I see what it says.  I try to explain what it mans and then I try to ask the big so what question.  So what do I do with this?  There I something to do with this passage of Scripture, not just read it.  It is not just about knowledge.  It is about applying God’s Word in our life. And the first thing we need to do, like Nehemiah, he made a good investigation and that was point number one under number four there.  Investigation. He looked to see exactly what was going on, what were the needs going to be and then he began to communicate that need.  So step one, recognize the ruins of your life.And how do you do that?  Well, acknowledge, first of all, to yourself, that the ruins of your life are real.  They are real ruins.  Now, we talked a lot about this and in the first one, in facing reality.  Until a person admits and understands that their life is in shambles, that this alcohol problem is more than just a little problem, it is something that is consuming your life.  This addiction, this anger, this envy or these attitudes of aggression towards everyone and everybody or this self defense mechanism that kicks in every time anybody says hello to you, those kind of things are problems and our lives, because of the choices we make, because of the direction we take, our lives are in a mess and we have all kinds of problems that we have to deal with, that we have to look at them.  We cannot minimize them.  We can’t go around them.  We cannot just ignore them.  We cannot be negligent.  And so we have to acknowledge to ourselves that the ruins of our lives are real.A wonderful example is what Alcoholics Anonymous does.  They have been doing it for years.  And, by the way, originally, that was a Christian organization.  It is kind of interesting how it has evolved. But the very first thing that a person had to do is they have to be able to say, just three little words, “I am...” four little words, “I am an alcoholic.”  They have to be able to say that.  They have got to come to that place, come to the grips that they are an alcoholic.  We have got to come to the place where we say, “I am an addict.”  “I am angry.” “I am selfish.”  “I am lazy.”  “I am self centered.”  “I am an egotist.” “I am mad all the time.”  And we have to come to the place where we actually investigate...don’t just hear what people are saying and brush it off, but stop and look at our lives, investigate and find out just exactly what kind of person we are.So we do an exam.  We realize and acknowledge that the ruins of our life are real and then the second thing is, under this, acknowledge to yourself this.  You have to acknowledge to your family that you are responsible.We live in the greatest blames shifting age of all history.  Psychology and psychiatry are designed, they are in business to help people shift their responsibility for their actions to somebody else.  They like to say, “Well, you know, if it hadn’t been for your great, great, great, great grand pa so and so who did such and such then you wouldn’t be in this kind of situation.  It wouldn’t be your fault.”  And so we love to shift the blame. We don’t like to take the responsibility.I love what David did.  Somebody said, “Well, you know, David in the Bible must have been perfect because he was a man after God’s own heart.”Well, King David was far from perfect, but when somebody put the finger on the problem David didn’t blame anybody.  When Nathan said, “David, you are the man that has done this deed of killing this other person and of robbing his wife,” David said, “You are right.  Against God I have sinned.  I have sinned.”You need, we need, I need to take responsibility for what is going on in my life.  I need to be responsible.You know, we say, “Well, that’s right.  You know, out in the old cruel world that’s the way it is and, you know, people like to shift responsibility and we don’t have presidents and vice presidents and we don’t have congressmen and senators that say, ‘the buck stops here.’ We just don’t have that anymore.”Well, let me let you in on a little secret.  It is creeping in and has crept in, Jude says, “unawares,” right among the Christian community because we have terminology for it and we have decided that the way we are going to handle that is we will say, “You know, it is really not my fault because I am suffering from generational sin.  You know, my great, great, great grandfather was an alcoholic and then my great, great grandfather was an alcoholic and my great grandfather was an alcoholic...”  Just coming on to, “So I’m an alcoholic.  That’s the end of the matter. I don’t have to worry about it.  It’s not my problem.  It is their fault and I am just going to just keep on with it.”Funny that Ezekiel says that nobody is going to be able to use that, but the Bible says that every man is going to die and be punished and corrected and is going to answer for his own sin.You say, “Well, didn’t they have any influence over us?”Yes, but we are under no obligation to past generations to carry on their mistakes. Let me say that to you again.  You are under no obligation to the generations before you to carry on the exact same downfall in your life that they had.And so the first thing we have to do is look at the ruins of our life and admit they are real.  I have got real problems.  I am angry.  I am mad.  I have problems with pornography. I keep doing the same things over and over.  You  know, I chase skirts, you know.  I am after women.  I can’t be faithful to my wife.  I can’t be faithful to my husband.  And this thing is just...What we have to do is face the facts.  I am a lazy person.  Laziness is an infectious thing, contagious in America today.  I am lazy. I am irresponsible.  I can’t be counted on. I am a liar.  We have to come to a...in our own hearts. I didn’t say you had to stand on the street corner out there and tell the whole world. In your own heart the first thing you have got to do is quit blaming others, look at yourself and say, “You know what?  Here is the truth about me. Here is what is ruining me and I am responsible.”  That is the first thing that you have to do.Then we are going to move on to the second one.  Write this down. Look at verse number 14 if you would.  He says, “Then I went on to the Fountain Gate and to the King’s Pool, but there was no room for the animal under me to pass.”You say, “Well, what in the world are you going to get out of that?”Well, listen to this.  You need to realize that you have left no room in your life.You say, “Well, what would have been the problem why that animal couldn’t pass?”Well, the walls were broken down. There’s all burnt timbers laying everywhere, you know, just imagine Nebuchadnezzar and his army the come through and they pull these walls down, pull all the buildings down, there is stuff laying everywhere and he is trying to get around rocky terrain. If you have ever seen any kind of picture of what Jerusalem looks like, it is perched on top of this hill.  There are valleys all around.  And here he is trying to go around the outside of it to get a good look at the walls and the extent of the destruction. And while he is doing it there is so much junk and there is so much rubble and there is so much trash, he just can’t do it.  And so what does he have to do?Well, he has got to dismount, walk slow, tip toe around. It takes him all night long and he makes this very meticulous survey and he has to do much of it by foot because there is just so much junk.All right.  So you investigate your life.  And you take a really good investigation of your life and you are going to find out that because of the issues of your life and the situations of your life and the circumstances of your life and the choices that you make, you leave a lot of rubble, a lot of junk, a lot of baggage, a lot of things that people, other people are having to deal with.It is important to understand that a life of bad habits and decisions makes so much junk and trash that a person doesn’t hardly leave himself any wiggle room personally.And do you know what a prison is?  A prison is a place where you put a person that has taken personal indulgence to the nth degree. They have taken personal freedom and personal rights to the nth degree and they have trampled on everyone else in the process and because they have trampled on everyone else and because they have decried any restraint whatsoever, the only way for those people to be able to get along is to put them in a place where the only person that they are damaging now is themselves.We don’t leave any room in our life and any effort to make a change is like moving a beached barge.  Not only that, but the people around you have been kept at a distance, too, by the bad habits.One of the greatest stories in the Bible is the story of Abigail and Nabal. And Nabal was a very foolish man.  In fact, his name meant fool. He lived in the time of King David.  One day when he had done something that was the most foolish of things, he had threatened King David and his armies and his own wife, while still honoring him by saving his life from David and from his army looked at him and thought about him and she concluded, “Well, you know, this man is just a scoundrel.”  His workers, in fact, and all of his servants looked at him.  And when they were communicating with the wife Abigail they said, “You know, he is just a scoundrel. He is so much of a scoundrel that nobody can even talk to him.”Well, it is like that isn’t it.  We get edgy quick. We are know it alls, self absorbed, defensive, combative, argumentative and the list goes on.  Why? Because whenever we start self destructing and we start influencing the people around us, the very first thing we begin to do is we get to the place where there is no room for anybody to say anything to us because we are just going to lash out at them.  We are going to fight back.  We are going to be defensive.The first thing we do is we don’t leave any room for God in our life.  I have noticed that when people are at the height of their self destruction the last thing they want to do is hear from God.  The last thing they want to do is for somebody to come talk to them and try to use God’s Word to help them and encourage them.  That is, until they come to themselves, until God gets their attention because they get at the bottom of the rope.Not only that, but they leave no room for others.  The person that allows himself or herself to self destruct is always consuming not just their own lives, but the lives of all of those around them.I want to ask you a question. How many of you know that you know people that because of all of the choices they have made and what has happened to them as a result of those choices, they are not just consuming their own life, but they are consuming the lives of their family and people around them?  Just raise your hand.It eats people up.  People who become self destructive, people who make decisions, they become proud or they become angry or they become know it alls or they become addicted to this substance or that, the next thing you know or it could be something, it could be pornography, it could be some sexual sin or adultery, they get involved in those things and then all of the sudden that event and those strings of events begin to consume the very family around them because nobody does anything that doesn’t have influence on other people.I want you to know that everybody in this room this morning is a leader, absolutely unequivocally, without any shadow of a doubt you are in here and you are a leader because leadership is influence and we are all influencing somebody toward God or toward evil.  Every life is an influence and so a person who is not in line with what God wants, but only what they want, are influencing people and you are affecting the lives, I am affecting the lives of other people. There is no room for others.Let me go on, number three.  Write it down on your sheet very quickly. Renew the relationships of your life.  Look at verse number 16.And the officials did not know where I had gone or what I had done; I had not yet told the Jews, the priests, the nobles, the officials, or the others who did the work.  Then I said to them, "You see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lies waste, and its gates are burned with fire.”He began to communicate, he began to tell other people. He began to build relationship with those people.  Why?  Because he was not going to be able to build this wall alone.Now, you remember, this man is a cup bearer.You say, “What is that?”Well, it is a governmental attaché who had the responsibility of tasting the food and wine that was put before the king at Susa so that he would not be killed. That was his area of expertise.You say, “How old was Nehemiah?”I don’t have any idea.  I suspect a man of 30 or more because most of the time in any of those positions you never got into those positions until you were 30 years of age. A priest, for instance...he couldn’t become a priest until he was 30 and he had to be done by the time he was 50.  He couldn’t say anything. He couldn’t be a priest after he was 50.  Kind of interesting, isn’t it?But so I don’t know how old he was.  I don’t know how much experience he had.  I don’t know whether he had a tinker toy set or legos when he was a kid and he learned how to build.  But when he was going to Jerusalem, I have a sneaking suspicion this was all new to him.  In his heart he wanted to rebuild a wall.  But did he know how to build a wall?And, number two, could he build the wall alone?  No.  He had to build a relationship with those people. He was very wise.  He said, “Listen.”  He said, “Look at the walls of our city.  Look at the destruction that has been wrought. Look at how desperate your situation is, but more important than anything else, look at the name and reputation of our God which lies in disrepute. God is suffering because of the destruction of this city.”Can I let you in on a little secret?  When your life is self destructive do you know whose purpose is thwarted?  Do you know whose glory is robbed?  Do you know whose plans are put on the sideline?  Do you know who it is that we are stopping?  Not that you could permanently stop him, not that God can’t do your think another way, but whenever we begin to choose our own way and our own self indulgence instead of the will of God do you know what we do?  We rob God of his glory in our life.Do you know what the ultimate goal of God is for every single person in this world?  It is that they would be born into his family.  It is not God’s will that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.  God wants everybody to be saved.Number two, Romans chapter eight and verse 29.  “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son.”  That is the plan of God for every one of us.  And if you are not becoming more and more like Christ in your daily life as a Christian, then who is it that is being robbed?Well, first of all, you miss out on the joy of knowing you are doing God’s will. Number two, God does not receive the glory for your life.Can I let you in on a little something this morning? I pray that every sermon I preach and every lesson I teach and every prayer I pray encourages you and builds you up and helps you in your life and brings you great joy.  But the great purpose of every sermon I preach is the glory of God.  And the purpose of every song we sing in this church is to lift up the name of Jesus. And the very reason that I would teach to you so that your life could be turned around, I know it will help you. It will bring happiness and peace, but that is not the primary reason.  The primary reason and I see Kevin sitting on the front row.  Kevin, you exist for the glory of God.  God wants to do something in your life that will bring him glory.Do you understand that?  Do you understand that every single person in this world was created in the image of God for the glory of God and that when we don’t yield and submit to his will we rob him of his glory?  Can anybody say amen?It is the truth.  It is the Word of God.  He made us for himself and for his glory.  And so how do I do this?  Well, you renew these relationships.  We are not recruiting people to build a physical wall.  We need people to help us with our situations and our problems.Number one, under that, you alone, you alone, I alone, we alone, personally, individually, have to face our problems. We have established that.  We face our problems.  They are yours.Number two, you alone cannot fix your problems.  You alone must face your problems.  But then you are going to have to have help.  Nehemiah alone got the vision from God, but Nehemiah had to have some help. He had to share his vision. Every man in this room needs an accountability group.  I’m not going to talk about the women, the children, the teens.  I think everything rises and falls on leadership and I believe that when the men in this church and the men in any church get their own hearts right with God and in tune with him and when you will submit yourself to a group of men that will ask you hard questions and will pray with you...I have the benefit every Friday morning, been doing this for years since I have been here.  I have got a few friends together to say, “Hey, let’s have breakfast.”  And we started it way back when Mugs first started.  We said, “Let’s get together once a week and have breakfast. I tell you what we’ll do. We’ll just talk and chat and talk about the ball game and what we’ll do is we’ll also ask each other hard questions and see if we are living for God.”  And so Bernie Lyle is in my group.  Bernie Lyle has given...I have given Bernie full permission to ask me, “Pastor Phil, are you being honest in all of your dealings? Pastor Phil, are you preaching one thing and living another?  Pastor Phil...”And do you know what?  We get together and we cry and we pray and we prayed over all kinds of situations together.  But I have just got a little...you know what?  You don’t need 100 men, 200 men.  You need a little group of men that you can get together with and you can sit down and you can be accountable and you can enlist their help in holding you accountable. You need your wife on board.  You need your children on board.  You need all kinds of people to be on board to help you.  You alone must face your problem. You alone cannot fix your problem.  Admit it.  You need other peoples’ help.Assure the other people that you are seeking God’s help.  I love this.  In verse 18 says, I have talked about the hand of God being on him.  He talked about it earlier.  Later in verse number 20 he says that the God of heaven is going to prosper us.  Here is one of those situations where a person wants to renew the relationships and start fixing their life and start seeing God move in their life.  And so what do they do?  Well they start going to the people that matter most. They go to a wife, a husband, a father, a mother, a brother or sister and they tell them. They say, “Listen.  I have come to the place where I know that I have really messed up my life and I am ready to turn it around.”The very first thing that that wife, mother, brother, sister, friend says is, “Oh, yeah. Here we go again.”Now, listen to me.  Please don’t be discouraged if you make...if you decide in your heart you are going to change, you decide in your heart that God is moving, you  are tired of blaming others, you are going to take responsibility, you are going to face the issues of your life, you are going to enlist some help for your life. Don’t be surprised if people have given up because they are tired. They have seen this before.I talk to people and deal with people on a daily basis and sometimes a wife will call in and say, “I have been over this and over this and over this with him and, pastor, he just will not turn off that computer and all of that pornography and I am at my wit’s end.  I guess I am just going to have to live with this or divorce him.”They may have given up because they have heard it all before. They may have given up because they have just become accustomed to it.You know, that was what was going on there in Jerusalem, wasn’t it?  You know, these people had been in that city for all of these years.  I mean those walls have been down for over 100 years and you know what?  I mean, they had kind of gotten used to it. They were walking around it and going by it and ignoring it and stepping through the stones and, you know, I can just imagine after 100 years all of the little secret passages and pathways that the people had worked in and out of that city as they finally figured out and located all the problems and they knew how to just go around the problems.Do you know what people do in their homes when you have got a family member or you have got a bigger or larger family scenario? Do you know what people do?  Well, we begin to make accommodations.  We begin to make excuses for that person.  We begin to make reasons and we begin to prop up all kinds of things to sort of help just get around the situation because, you know, that’s the way they are.  Their parents were that way, their parents were that way. Yes, they are drunks or yeah he is lazy. No, he really won’t work.  No, he can’t keep a job.  He can’t keep a job because he is just mad all the time.  Nobody can be his boss.  He gets...and so they just...ok, you know, it’s job after job after job or it is anger after anger or it is trip to the clinic after trip to clinic because they just can’t put the pills away. They can’t get off the meth.  They can’t get...They just can’t.And so what do family members do?  Family members learn to accommodate and what happens?  When this individual says, “It is time for change God is working in my heart,” the rest of the family says, “Look.  You know, I  know you have got good intentions and you want to do this, but you have done this so many times before.  Look, we have gotten used to it.  Look, let’s just keep it under the blanket.  Let’s keep it quiet.  Let’s just, you know, let’s just carry on.”  That’s what happens.And let me go just a little further.  They may have given up because God doesn’t seem to be listening to their prayers.I have dealt with people and I have talked to people recently that have been praying for a mate for a son, for a mother, for a sister, for some family member that has just had a melt down and it is consuming all of the family.  And they have prayed for them for a week, a month, a year, for two years, 10 years.  They have been praying and praying and praying.  And, quite frankly, they are wondering if God is listening and if he is ever going to listen to anything that they pray about.Do you know when the child of God will not respond to the warnings of God and the corrections of God and they just harden their hearts, do you know what happens in the process?  You harm the spirituality of everybody else that is around you.I can’t tell you how many women would say, “I would be at church a whole lot more and serve the Lord and be involved, but, you know, my husband just throws a fit when I go out the door.”  Or, “My wife, you know, she is just not with me on this.  She is just, you know, she just thinks I have become some kind of a holy Joe and she just doesn’t want to have anything to do with it.”  And so you got one that is pulling one way and one that is pulling the other.And because of not listening to the correction of the Lord and the Spirit of God, it damages the spiritual lives of other people.Well, when we start actually taking steps, people will be encouraged to help us.  Look at verse number 17.Then I said to them, "You see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lies waste, and its gates are burned with fire. Come and let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer be a reproach."  And I told them of the hand of my God which had been good upon me, and also of the king’s words that he had spoken to me. So they said, "Let us rise up and build." Then they set their hands to this good work.Boy, when he told them, “Here is how God has worked it out and here is what God has done in my life and here is the vision that I have before us and let’s just, come on, let’s just work on this and rebuild this city.  Boy, they were encouraged.  They could see God moving.  And here is what I am here to tell you.  Whenever you start making some real concrete progress and you start making some steps and you face your situation and you confess your sin and involve the help of other people, even though reluctant at first, whenever you begin to get serious with God and with other people do you know what?  Other people will get serious with you.  And they will be encouraged to help.Let me say it again. You alone can face your problems.  But you alone will not solve all of your problems. You are going to need the help of almighty God and you are going to need the support of other people.  God never intended for us to be individuals. We are so individualistic, we are so much to ourselves in these United States of America. We have got it in our mind that I will lift myself up by the bootstraps and I will do this and I will do that.  God never intended for Christians to be that kind of independent, but rather interdependent.  And there is no more important place of interdependence than in the home.And, by the way, men, the Bible says that your wife is your comleter, not your competer.  She is not your competition. Listen to your wife.  Listen to your husband. Listen to those that love you.  Listen to those that try to help and listen to God almighty in heaven.Finally and probably the most important of anything is refuse to listen to the riff raff of your life.  Verse number 19.But when Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite official, and Geshem the Arab heard of it, they laughed at us and despised us, and said, "What is this thing that you are doing? Will you rebel against the king?"The first thing they did was to come along with mocking and ridicule. And then they did it by slander and threats.  Here is the most absurd of all truth.  As soon as you come to your senses and assess your life and begin to make changes, people stand up to oppose you. I just cannot understand it.  You would think that the people of our lives, the people that know us, they would be clapping for us, encouraging us, trying to help us.  And, by the way, you be an encourager to other people. When people start trying to change, don’t belittle them.  Don’t mock them.  Don’t laugh at them. Don’t make fun of them. Don’t say you have seen it before.  Don’t say, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”  Encourage people. Encourage people to take the right steps.  But here is what happens.  People stand up.One of the little thoughts that I would like you to writ eon the margin of your page or on the margin of your Bible are these two little words.  And the words are: building and battling.  And let me let you in on a little secret that for the rest of your Christian life all of your life in this world you are going to be in a process of building and then you are also going to be in a process of battling those people and those influences and forces that would fight against you.  You are going to build with all of your heart and while you are building, there is going to be a battle ensue.  It happens every time.  You make up your mind you are going to serve the Lord and somebody is going to step up to try to keep you from it.  It is funny. Before people come to know the Lord Jesus as their personal Savior, people leave them alone. Nobody seems to bother them.I can’t tell you how many people say, “Pastor, you know, when I came to know the Lord Jesus it seemed like that I had more opposition and more problems and more difficulties.  I thought when I got saved things were going to get easier.”Well, you have an indwelling Holy Spirit in your life empowering you, but here is what I want you to understand.  Before you came to know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you were no threat to Satan.  But when you come to know the Lord Jesus as your personal Savior all of the sudden you are in the enemy camp.  You are in opposition to his kingdom and our adversary, the accuser of the brethren is going to stand up and oppose us.  You are going to build and battle.  You can work on building your home. Satan is going to battle your home. You can work on building your spiritual life.  Satan is going to battle your spiritual life.  You work on building a relationship with your children.  He is going to make sure that they have influences at school that fight against your relationship with your children.  It is a building and battling process.  It is going to go on the rest of your life.But here is what I want you to know. I want you to know that in Jesus we can have the victory.You say, “Who were these people that did this, this Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite, Geshem the Arab?”Well, Sanballat was a pagan politician.  He was just a pagan.  He was a materialist.  It was all about the taxes.  It was all about who was going to be in charge in Jerusalem.  He was just a pagan.  Well, you expect it from the pagans.  You expect the pagans of our life, those that don’t know our God and could care nothing about him, you could expect them to oppose us, but it is that next group, Tobiah the Ammonite.You say, “Well, who was Tobiah the Ammonite?”Well, Ammon, the great, great, great, great, great grandfather of the Ammonites was the son of a man named Lot.  Lot was the nephew of a man named Abraham. One day Lot living in Sodom was warned of God to get out. He didn’t want to.God said, “Lot, get out of Sodom.  I am going to destroy it.”He grabbed him.  His two daughters went with him. He ended up getting drunk and having an incestuous relationship with the daughter.  That daughter gave birth to a son by the name of Ammon and Ammon is a distant relative of the children of Israel.Isn’t it amazing?  Paul, I...this is amazing to me.  It is amazing that not only the pagans of our life might stand up against us.  But somewhere in our parentela, somewhere in all that group of people out there that are in our family, somebody is going to stand up and opposed us even in our family.Do you know that Jesus says sometimes the greatest enemies are going to be those of our own household?Would you listen to me for a moment?  Not that we give up and we quit praying for our family and our friends and stop loving them. Do not be surprised when family does not understand what you are trying to do when you begin to give your heart and life for Jesus for change.  How many of you know it is a fact that sometimes family stands opposed to change in our life?  Would you just raise your hand?  They have gotten used to use the way that we are.You say, “Why is that? Why does...why would people be opposed to us bettering ourselves and getting right with God?  And why would we be...why would they be opposed to that?”Because many time we have been involved with those people in activities and lifestyles that are not right with God and if God starts changing us what does it make them feel about themselves?  It is easier to ridicule you and stop your change than it is to get right with God themselves.Well, who was the third one?  Well, it was the man by the name of Geshem.  He was an Arab.  He was the son of Ishmael.  He was just an out and out enemy opposition.  So there is always the materialist and the family members and then the outright enemies that are going to stand up against us.And let’s finish with verse 20. Do you know how Nehemiah handled this?  I love it.  It says in verse number 20 of chapter two. It says this.So I answered them, and said to them, "The God of heaven Himself will prosper us; therefore we His servants will arise and build, but you have no heritage or right or memorial in Jerusalem."God is on our side.  God wants me to grow.  Listen.  I want to tell you there is no one in the world that wants you to do well in the life more than your heavenly Father.  There is nobody in this world that wants you to stand up in the face of difficulty like your Father in heaven.  There is no one on this planet that wants you to be able to say no to the devil and no to Satan and no to self and no to sin like your heavenly Father.  And so what did Nehemiah do?  He looked at this bunch of people that were ridiculing, laughing, mocking.  He looked at the riff raff of the situation and he said, “Our God is going to prosper us.”I want to announce something to you this morning.  That with God on your side, you and God make a majority in every situation.  And I want you to know that you do not have to yield.  You do not have to give in.  You do not have to go backwards.  You are under no obligation to go back and live the life that God does not want you to live.  You are not obligated.Let me just give you just a couple of thoughts here.  When we looked at this situation and we see who these people are, these individuals, a pagan and a distant family member and an outright enemy. They standup to fight.  And do you know how he answers them?  Here is what he says to them at the end.He said, “God is going to prosper us and, by the way, we are going to rise and build this thing because you have no heritage, you have no memorial and you have no rights, you have no authority.  You have got no authority in this place. We are not rebelling against the king. He knows exactly what we are doing.”Here is what I want you to understand. The one that stands to oppose every good step you will ever take in your life, the one who stands to oppose every right choice you will ever make in your life, the one who stands to accuse you day and night before your heavenly Father in heaven is Satan himself.  And here is what we need to understand.  I want you to get this if you get nothing else.  Satan is trying to build a paper prison around you. He is trying to tell you that you are obligated.  You have always been a drunk. You are always going to be a drunk.  He wants you think that if you have ever been a pornographer, you are always going to be a pornographer.  He wants you to think that because grandpa was this and grandma was that and because this is your habit, he has got you in a paper prison.  He wants you to think he has authority in your life.  Well, here is what Nehemiah told that bunch.He said, “Listen.  I’ve got something to tell you. You don’t have any authority in Jerusalem.”Here is what I am telling you this morning. Satan has no authority in your life, none.  Listen to me this morning.You say, “Well, what do I do about it?”I want you to open your Bible to James chapter four and listen to the Word of God.  Here is what it says.  Listen to the Word of God.  Here is what it says. “Make sure you understand that you are not...” It is a paper prison. Break out of it.  You don’t have to...you don’t have to give in. You don’t have to go backwards. You don’t have to obey every impulse that your body or your spirit might give you.  You do not have to do that. James chapter four, verse seven. Listen to God’s Word.Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.   Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.Folks, the devil wants you to think he has authority over what you do.  He has you in a paper prison of doubt and fear.  He says you can’t change, you can’t be saved, you can’t repent of your evil.  And I want you to know that the devil is a liar. He is a usurper of God’s authority and God will put his hand on you.  God will help you.  God will give you the favor of people in your life. God will be there.And here is what I want to say to you.  How do you handle it when these people stand up against you and when Satan opposes every good step and when he tempts you?You say, “Pastor, isn’t it a sin to be tempted?”If it is then Jesus was a sinner because he was tempted.You say, “Pastor Phil, are you ever tempted to do wrong?”Jesus was tempted.You say, “Is temptation a sin?”If temptation was a sin we are without hope.Listen to me this morning.  We do not have to yield to temptation.“What am I supposed to do?”Resist.  Resist temptation. Fight against it.  Say no to the devil and yes to Jesus.You say, “What am I supposed to do?”You are to...when the temptation comes, the immediate reflex action through the power of the Holy Spirit needs to be, “No.”  And then go another direction.  Just, “No.”Do you know what Satan can’t get in anywhere he is not invited? Did you know that? He has no authority, not in the life of a lost person, especially not in the life of a saved person.  Demons can’t even come into lost people until they are invited and they open the door to them.  Did you know that?Listen to me.  Resist Satan and he will flee from you.You say, “Well, what exactly are you talking about?”Here is what I want you to understand this morning.  I hear it all the time.“Well, pastor, you know, George struggles and struggles and struggles with pornography.”No he doesn’t.  He enjoys it.“Well, you know, I got a sister and she’s been tipping the bottle ever since she was such and such...she’s just...she’s just been struggling with that all of her life.”No, she doesn’t. She doesn’t struggle with it.  She enjoys it.And the reason I say that is because the Bible says that...listen. I didn’t write the Bible.  The Bible says right there, it says in James chapter four verse seven, it says this, it says, “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”  It is either true or it is not true.  Do you choose to believe the Bible is true or it is not true? Let me hear you.It is true.All right.  If we resist the devil in the power of the Holy Spirit then he is going to have to flee from you.   You are not in a prison of Satan. You do not, I do not, none of us have to yield to temptation.You say, “Pastor, are you trying to tell me that I can be sinless?”I’m not trying to create a new doctrine of sinless perfection, but I am certainly telling you this morning that we can sin less.“Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”  I love this part. “Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you.”Isn’t that wonderful?  You take a step towards God, God is going to take a step towards you.The story of the prodigal son.  The prodigal son is way off.  He is way off in the distance. He has wasted all of his father’s blessing upon him in riotous living with wicked friends. Remember that pagan bunch?  He has wasted all of it.  He is eating nothing but the husks of what the pigs are eating as he is feeding the pigs.What happens to him?  He comes to himself.  He says, “In my father’s house the hired servants are eating far better than I am.  I will arise and I will go to my father.”  And he took a step toward his father and every step he came toward the father, guess what?  The father on the other end is watching and waiting and looking for him to come.  If you are the child of God and you take a step toward the Father, the Father is taking a step towards you.  “Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts.”And, by the way, those were imperative verbs. That is for you to do. That is for you to do. That is for you to do.You say, “What do you mean?  I thought the Holy Spirit was going to have to everything?”Oh, yeah.  He is going to.  He is going to give you the power to do it, but you in your own heart, you had better decide, “I am going to drawn night to God.  I am going to get closer to God. I am going to get closer to him and then I am going to be able to say no to Satan.”Do you know what we need to learn to do this morning?  We just need to learn to say no.  Resist Satan and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God and he will draw nigh to you.  Cleanse your hands you sinners.  Purify your hearts. It is amazing what it will do.Would you bow your heads and close your eyes?  We’re building. Nehemiah 2:11-20 (New International Version.  All Scripture references are from the New King James Version unless indicated otherwise).Nehemiah 2:112 Timothy 3:16 (King James Version)Nehemiah 2:14 Romans 8:29 (King James Version)Nehemiah 2:17-18Nehemiah 2:19Nehemiah 2:20James 4:7-8James 4:7Ibid.James 4:8 (King James Version)Ibid.Page  PAGE 2 of  NUMPAGES 19

Get Ready For A Change

Sermon Transcript

“GET READY FOR A CHANGE”

Pastor Phil Winfield

Nehemiah 2:1-10

September 23, 2007

Grace Church of Des Moines, IA

4200 E. 25th StreetDes Moines, IA 50317

Website:  http://www.gracehome.com

Online Sermons: http://gracehome.sermonaudio.com

Now I want to ask you a question. I want to ask you, as we looked at the facing reality and then we began to pray—and we talked about this quite extensively the first two weeks—I want to ask a question.  And you have got it on your Scripture sheet to write it down. And that is: When is, pastor...When is a good time to pray?  When is it that I should pray?And somebody is going to say, “Well, 1 Thessalonians 5:17 says pray all the time, ‘Pray without ceasing.’”  And David prayed early in the morning. Jesus prayed, you know, before every temptation and every problem.Yeah. There is a great time to pray. But here is what I get from this passage of Scripture that we have been studying. And I want you to write it down so that you won’t forget it. And that is: When is a good time to pray?  The answer: Pray before I do anything else.  Just write that down.  Pray before I do anything else in my life.Prayer is a priority for those that would find help and seek meaningful change from the status quo.Somebody might ask, “Pastor, now aren’t we going to have to do more than pray if we are going to get our lives straightened out?  You know, I’ve got situations.  I’ve got circumstances. I’ve got people.  I’ve got all kinds of things and issues and I am going to have to confront them. And so don’t I have to do more than pray?”Yes.  We are supposed to do more than pray.  We are going to have to do more than pray to change our lives.  But we should never do anything until we have prayed.  And we learn that from this first chapter and second chapter of the book of Nehemiah.   He was going to take action, but he didn’t take action until he had prayed.We studied his prayer and found out that it wasn’t a little two minute, two second, 30 second little prayer that he shot up to the Lord, but rather he spent months in prayer and we will see that in just a little bit more in a moment.What we find is that Nehemiah’s prayer was followed, then, by action.  He expected God to do something. He was going to be ready when God did it.  His plans involved the risk. He risked his position, his rank, even his life to seek the good fortune of an occupied country from the very occupying king. He must face the king.  He must face his fears.  He must have a plan.In building block number one we have to face reality.  We can’t ignore it.  We can’t deny it. We can’t minimize the junk.  And the disasters of our lives, we cannot minimize the effects that the junk of our lives has on the friends, relationships and the influences of our life.Now, as we assess the needs, we need to ask God to do something. And then we need to be ready to seize the opportunity.If you have your Bibles they need to be open to Nehemiah chapter two and we are going to look at the verses one through 10.  I want you to allow the words of Nehemiah to speak God’s living Word into your heart.In the month of Nisan in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was brought for him, I took the wine and gave it to the king. I had not been sad in his presence before; so the king asked me, "Why does your face look so sad when you are not ill? This can be nothing but sadness of heart." I was very much afraid, but I said to the king, "May the king live for ever! Why should my face not look sad when the city where my fathers are buried lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?"  The king said to me, "What is it you want?" Then I prayed to the God of heaven,  and I answered the king, "If it pleases the king and if your servant has found favour in his sight, let him send me to the city in Judah where my fathers are buried so that I can rebuild it."  Then the king, with the queen sitting beside him, asked me, "How long will your journey take, and when will you get back?" It pleased the king to send me; so I set a time.  I also said to him, "If it pleases the king, may I have letters to the governors of Trans-Euphrates, so that they will provide me safe-conduct until I arrive in Judah?  And may I have a letter to Asaph, keeper of the king’s forest, so he will give me timber to make beams for the gates of the citadel by the temple and for the city wall and for the residence I will occupy?" And because the gracious hand of my God was upon me, the king granted my requests.So I went to the governors of Trans-Euphrates and gave them the king’s letters. The king had also sent army officers and cavalry with me.  When Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite official heard about this, they were very much disturbed that someone had come to promote the welfare of the Israelites.All right. Let’s bow our heads and pray and ask that the Lord would bless our time.And, our Father, we do thank you, once again, as we come into your presence. We have heard not only just a simple reading, but a dynamic reading of your Word this morning, Lord. And I pray that you would add your blessing to the preaching and teaching of your Word.Lord, as we are in our third week, now, we start getting into the meat of what we have to do to change.  I pray that these would not be words passing over my lips that only entertain.  I pray that folks would not just be engaged by my mannerisms, but I pray that they would hear the message and make changes, Lord, in their own heart.  Bless us now as we are in your presence in Jesus’ name.  Amen.So if you have your Scripture sheet out it says, “Get Ready for Change” at the top. I need you to write a few things.  The key building block for this week is obviously going to be the word “faith.”  And that is the third in the series that we are building.  As we build and rebuild our lives it is going to take faith. And the key opposition is going to be the word fear.Look at verse number two of the passage just read.  And it said, “‘Why is your face sad, since you are not sick? This is nothing but sorrow of heart.’ So I became dreadfully afraid.”I believe that there is a misnomer.  There is a mistaken thought out there that Christians, believers in Jesus Christ, never fear, that they just go forward and they never have a fear in the world. Well, just not true.  Faith and fear are those elements that are always present in a Christian’s life. And as your faith increases, the opposition is going to increase. The difficulties are going to be there and we are going to fear.Sometimes I read lots of different information in books and I read about people like Douglas MacArthur and we look back on him as just that war hero that was just rock solid and he just never feared.  Not so.  Read his memoirs and find out the times of fear and trepidation in his own heart as he was leading men into battle and trying to conquer that area of the world in World War II.It goes on like that.  There is always fear going to be present in our life.On your sheet, there, the first thing we have to do is we have to recognize that whenever we come to understand the situations of our life, the circumstances of our life, the first thing we are going to find ourselves doing is waiting. We are going to pray and then we are going to wait.  We don’t like waiting.  I am not one of those people who likes to wait. I don’t think anybody here particularly loves the whole idea of patient waiting for anything.Somebody said that the definition of a split second is how long it takes between the light turning green and the idiot behind you to blow his horn. I mean, it is just really, really, really quick.  We don’t have a lot of patience.  And  I am just as bad as the next person. I feel so bad for Chris Eller here at the church.And you say, “Well, why do you feel bad for Chris?”Well, up till now one of his responsibilities has been babysitting... I would say babysitting a bunch of computers around here and taking care of the technology, but truthfully, he is not babysitting the computers as much as he is the impatient people like me that want it to do what you want it to do yesterday, never mind the fact I don’t push the right buttons and click and drag and do all the things I am supposed to do.  And so he is always having to do that because we are just not patient people.And I can imagine the emails that he gets from different guys around here.  We have got five or six pastors and we have got secretaries and we have got administrative people and, you know, the emails come in and I bet he wonders which way to turn sometimes because we all need it yesterday.Well, a lot of us are like that concerning our prayer life and concerning the situations of our life. And I want to say to you that the decision, the facing of reality that brings us to the place of heart brokenness or that brings us to the place—after we faced reality—that we need to do something, is a wonderful step, it is a necessary step, it is a priority step, it is the first step, but it is not the only step.Many times people will face the realities of their lives even in the spiritual realm in church or somebody will have a messed up life or a messed up home or they have been mean to their family or their wives or their children.  And they splintered their relationships.  They have got fragmented relationships everywhere and all of the sudden they say, “Oh, I am the guilty one.”  So they confess and then they come and they have an emotional response and they tell God, “Oh, God, I am going to change and I want to change it right now.”And then we get up and we expect that that’s it and everything is going to be different from then on and God is just going to remake us.  Listen.  It is just not going to happen that way.  It is necessary to face reality.  Then it is necessary to pray, to meditate, to think and to plan.  But it is going to take some action.And I want you to know that true repentance in our life—which is what we need. And I don’t want to get off on that big Bible word and doctrine and theology. But just simply to say that true change in our life is going to happen, it is going to happen when we not only face the truth, when we pray about it and give it to God. But then we turn around and take measures. We take steps. We make advances.And so we don’t like to wait.  But what we are going to have to do is while we are waiting for an opportunity to actually do something we need to be patient.Will you look at verse one again? “And it came to pass in the month of Nisan.”You say, “What do you get out of that?”Well, Nisan is four months later than the month Chisleu which we first saw in the first verse of the first chapter.  So what I am saying is that this man, Nehemiah, has come to know and understand the desperate situation that was going on concerning his people. And for four months he has been carrying it in his heart. He has carried it on his shoulder.  He has prayed about it. He has mourned about it. He has wept about it. He has fasted about it.  He has gone into long prayer and meditation over it. And now, then, we are four months later.  The first thing we have to face is that we need to be patient.I am amazed how many times when I am studying something in the Bible that God is able to bring me to other passages and bring other illustrations that I wasn’t even thinking about to bear on the subject.  It is kind of like this.  I don’t know about you, but whenever this kind of happens in our life anyway.  It’s kind of like, you know, when you have a relative that moves to a distant state that you have never visited or you don’t know anything about and as for you it might as well not be a state. They moved to that state and then all of the sudden you start noticing.  It seems like every other plate on somebody’s car is from that state.  I mean all of the sudden you are aware.  You are awakened to that whole thing.Or perhaps it is you get a different car and maybe you get a car of a year and a model and a date and a color. And the next thing you know, you never noticed these cars before, but now you have one and the next thing you know, everybody has got one of those. I check out every Chevy pickup in the entire city every time because that is what I got.  I have a little Chevy pickup and after I got it—I always had Fords up to that point because I was a Ford guy, you know.  And then I was just Fords.  And then I finally got one and now I’m pooh-pooh on Fords.  I like Chevys because that’s what I got.  And so everybody...I look around.  And he’s a cool guy because he has got a Chevy.  And so on.You know how we do.  We just start noticing things like that.Well, I was studying this about patience and I was reading in my devotions this week and all of the sudden I come to this passage of Scripture that talks about patience and it leapt off the page.  It  concerned King David.And, you know, we think about King David.  We look back on his history in the Bible as this glorious reign of King David, but do you know there was probably no Bible character that was in more trouble all the time than King David. He was always in hot water.Sometimes it was his own fault. Sometimes it wasn’t his own fault. But he was always in trouble.  And I read in Psalm 62—and I want you to listen to what David said about his times of trouble in the life that he was living.  And the first thing he says in verse one:Truly my soul silently waits for God; From Him comes my salvation.  He only is my rock and my salvation; He is my defense; I shall not be greatly moved.You drop down to verse five and he starts talking to himself.I  will never forget the first time that I encountered one of these people with these new techie telephones that hang on their ear.  You guys know what I’m talking about? How many of you have seen those? They look like Dr. Spock or Captain Kirk or somebody, you know, just sort of a little behind the time. They got these things hanging on their ear. And, you know, you are looking at them.I will never forget.  One day I pulled up to a red light and I’m sitting at the red light and I am waiting on the red light and I looked over to the right and a guy in this land over here is sitting there with his hand on the wheel and he is gripping that wheel.  He is just talking like that.What in the world is wrong?I mean he is just really just talking. I thought, “Man this guy is...they need to pull him over, get the guys with white coats, get, you know...”  I didn’t know what was going on there.Finally, I guess Philip or somebody said, “Well he is probably on the phone.”I said, “Well, his hands...he was holding the steering wheel.”They said, “Yeah, but you ought to...you know, get with it, pops, you know,” he said.  “You know there’s a lot of stuff you don’t know about. And these little phones hang on your ear and you just voice actuated and all that.”And I said, “Well, I’m so far behind.”You know, I thought he was talking to himself.David was talking to himself in this verse.  Listen to what he says.  He says, “My soul, wait silently for God alone.”He says to himself, “David, hey, in there. David, wait in God.  You have learned this lesson. You have been down this road.  You have been in trouble before. Don’t run ahead.  Don’t solve it yourself. Don’t put your hands in there.  Wait on God.”We have a really, really hard time waiting on God once we have decided to start trying to put things right in our life.  I want you to listen as I give you some very important thoughts this morning concerning this.  Don’t miss it.Patience before God when praying for a change is crucial. I want you to see this.  If God answered all of our prayers just as we pray them, just when we pray them, we would miss out on the lesson that God is teaching through our problems.And think of this. God is teaching us something.  God, if he answered all of our prayers just like we prayed them, then our character would suffer. And the reason is that God is far more interested in our character than he is our comfort and our convenience.Let me say that to you again.  Please do not miss this statement.  God is far more interested in your Christian character, in you becoming more like Jesus Christ than he is your comfort and my comfort, your convenience and my convenience, because if you look at the life of Nehemiah he already had a life of convenience. And the very prayer he was praying was going to take him through great discomfort, great trepidation, great fear and is going to complicate his life tremendously.God is more interested in making us what we need to be, more like Jesus, for his use than he is for us to just simply be comfortable and convenient.I want you to listen to this.  Nehemiah wanted to bring about a change and he would certainly need character to do it.Have you ever thought about your prayer lives and just sort of summed them up?  Think about this statement.  Many of our prayers are directed at asking God to remove the circumstances he is using in our life to make us more like Jesus.You probably didn’t hear that so let me say that to you again.  Pay attention and listen.  Many of the prayers of our life are directed at asking God to remove the circumstances of our life that he is using to make us more like Jesus.You say, “What?”The Bible says in James, it says, “Count it all joy when you fall into different temptations and trials because the trial of your work, because the trial of your faith works what?” Patience.  “And let patience have her complete work.”God is doing things in our lives. And if we get on the wheel of God’s workings as if we were a piece of pottery and we don’t like the pressure and we don’t like what God is doing to us to make us a vessel fit for our use, then we start complaining and we start, “Oh, God, take away the pain.  Take away the hurt.  Take away the bad relationship.  Take...”We start asking God to take away the very things that are making us useful for him. Don’t forget.  God’s purposes supercede our pleasures. Let me say that again.  God’s purposes always supercede our pleasures in our life.  God is doing something in our life.And many of our prayers are directed at asking God to remove those circumstances instead of embracing them.  Many prayers are directed at removing us from the place where God knows we need to be to be used by him.Imagine Nehemiah getting to be a complaining sort of a person. “Oh, God, I’m in Babylon. I can’t believe this.  Or I’m in Persia and here I am and I am not where I want to be and I would love to be over there and oh if things were just different and if timing was different and if I had a different boss and if I had a different wife and if I had a...”And you know how we go with that.  You know, I spend half of my ministry dealing with people on these two question: If and then.“If this was going on then I could do that.”“If I could get a different situation.”“If I had a different job.”“If I could get my bills paid.”“If I could get my mortgage down.”“If I could get these kids through school.”“If I could get my wife to pay attention.”“If I could get my kids obedience.”If, if, if...we go all the way through life if, then, if, then, if then.Nehemiah said, “Now is the time. I am going to pray and I am going to wait on God because now is the time.”It is not a matter of if and then.  It is a matter of God is working here and he is working now.  And God is building into your character what he wants you to be so that you and I can be fit for his use.Be patient in prayer. Pray not only for deliverance.  Pray for understanding.  Pray not only for deliverance.  Pray for understanding.After you are in this situation of being patient, then be preparing.  Write that down.  Be preparing.There are four months of time since he found out about the conditions in Jerusalem to the day he is going to face Artaxerxes and he is scared to death.  It says there in verse number two, “I became dreadfully afraid.”So for four months he has been praying. He has been fasting. He has been weeping.  He has been mourning. He has been meditating.  He has been thinking. He has been planning.  He has been praying and he has been planning.“Well, if I were to go to Jerusalem what would it take?  And if I was to get over there what are the things that I am going to need to help get this thing done?”And so he begins to think about it then.  “Well, the first thing I am going to have go have is help from the king.  Nobody is going to do anything without the king’s permission. I have got to have the king’s help. And then I am going to have some help from some people. I can’t do this all by myself.”As we get through this study you are going to find out how important working together is.  But even on the difficulties of an individual life you still have to work with the people of your life in order to be able to accomplish it.“I need help from the king and I am going to need help from some people. I am going to need whole lots of materials, you know. I mean, the place has been burned with fire so that means anything that was wood was burned up and it is not just a matter of stacking stones.  I have got to have girders and I have got to have beams.”And so he is thinking all...  “Here is what I am going to need. I am going to need this and that.”And here is the thing that we have to understand. If Nehemiah failed to plan then he was planning to fail. And if you and I fail to plan, then we are planning to fail.You say, “Well, how in the world does this work out in my individual life when I am trying to get back in order and get back on track with what God wants me to be?  How does that work?”Well, you are going to pray faithfully.  You are going to pray first.  You are going to pray sincerely. You are going to face your reality. You are going to pray continually and then you are going to begin to plan the things that will be necessary to make it all happen.He was planning.Well, what might you need to plan?  Well, things like this.  “All right.  I am an angry person.  I don’t know why I am so angry, but I get angry and I stay angry and I explode and I have a phosphorous type personality.  I am just like a little match. I explode when anybody rubs me the wrong way.  And so, Lord, I need help with my...I am going to have to face my anger. I am going to have to put a lid on it.  I am just going to have to do something with it.“The next thing is I have got to give time to my relationships. The truth is as I look at this matter and I sum up all the problems, I just...I have got relationship trouble with my wife, with my children or with my husband and my relatives.  I have just got these relationship problems.  And I am just going to have to give some time to these problems.”And so you start taking steps. “All right. How do I do that?”Well, you take a look at your life. You look at your calendar, what you have to do and you start blocking off time to be with them.It is amazing to me that when man and woman first meet and they are dating in the dating period before they get married, I mean, being together, they just can’t get enough of each other. They want to be together.  And men are the most conversational animals on planet earth before the conquest is over.  But once they have made the conquest, marry the woman and go home, then he moves on to other things and she is just...he just doesn’t have time.You know what?  It is going to take time on strained relationships. Can I say that again?  It is going to take a dedication of time.  And so what are you doing? You are planning.  So you are planning to face your difficulty, your anger.  You are planning to face your relationships.Something else we have got to do, I have got to put my priorities in order. I am going to have to face my priorities and see if I have got them in the right order.I hear Christians all the time and I have, you know, I am one and I talk.  And I am just as guilty as others from time to time. But sometimes we have to have a priority check.  We have got to look and find out: Is God first?  Is he first in our life?Let me just bother you.  It is that time of year when the great cathedrals of the autumn sport are now open.  And the great cathedrals, the great temples and those gods, those gods of the gridiron are out there running around and they...and we are giving enormous offerings to be able to go to those games and to be able to see them.  And we are giving enormous time and enormous worship.  It is not enough to go to the game and enjoy it and to buy a pop and Coke and a $17 hot dog or however much they cost.  It is not enough to do that. We have to come home and then get online and we have to talk to everybody in the county about the game that we just went to see. And we have to get on the chat rooms and we have got to read what ESPN said.  And then we have got to read what Fox Sports says. And then we have got to read what Yahoo Sports says. And we have got to read...You say “How do you know all that?”Because I do the same thing.But, you know, there are lots of people that would say, “I love God with all of my heart and he is first in my life.”Yet you will allow the god of the autumn cathedral to take first place and you will put God on hold, his work on hold, his service on hold, his giving on hold.  You will put it on hold in favor of being in a certain location at a certain time when it contradicts with being in the house of God.Let me tell you a little something.  When revival comes to a soul, when revival comes to an individual heart, they give God first place and they do not forsake the house of God.You say, “Well, that sounds so foreign. That sounds like 1957.”Well, I’m not trying to carry us back to 1957, but there was a lot of things going on in 1957 than are far greater than 2007: dedication, honesty.Listen to me for a moment.  We have to make some plans.  I have got to plan, put priorities in order.  I have got to get rid of selfishness.Let me tell you the phrase that is killing America, especially men and women.  “Well, I have just got to do the thing that I think is the best for me.  I know that you know what?  It is going to be rough on my wife and kids, but, you know, I just can’t believe God doesn’t want me to be happy.  And this relationship doesn’t seem like it is going anywhere and I just want...I know God wants me to be happy so I am just going to have to obey...  In the name of God wanting me to be happy, I am going to break all my promises. I am going to eliminate my vows.  I am going to go the opposite direction.  I am going to...my choice...I am willing to condemn the next generation, those children that are going to come up, because I am ready to go and do something different in the name of personal, selfish happiness.”Well, first of all, you don’t know anything about happiness if you think being happy is pleasing yourself non stop.  And, second of all, you don’t have the right to seek your own pleasure at the expense of everybody that knows you.You have to make plans, plans to face yourself, face your relationships, face your priorities, face your selfishness.And, guys, let me help you. You have to face this whole idea of the fact that in order to have a good relationship with your wife you are going to have to actually stop and have a conversation.Could I please give all the men a little revelation here this morning?  Your wife likes to talk to you.  She likes to have a conversation.  And she doesn’t like it to be limited to the commercials in the ball game.  In fact, there are other necessities that sometimes supercede that and there is not even time at the commercials.  They like to talk to you.  You need to talk to them.Now, folks, I talk for a living.  That’s what I do.  I talk.  I talk here at the church and I make phone calls all day long and talk to people and I talk to people in the staff and I talk to the secretaries and I talk to people in counseling and I talk about this and talk about that.  And when I go home and I walk in and Bonnie just, you know, it’s automatic.  Just hit the switch.  I walk in and oh she is so glad to see me.  “What was your day like?” And this and that and the other. She wants to talk.  And she begins to talk and everything like that and I kind of...my ears are hurting from so much listening.Do you know what?  It doesn’t make any difference. It doesn’t make any difference at all because if I want to be happy, if want...if she is going to be happy, if we are going to have a nice relationship then we are going to have to talk.You say, “Well, what kind of plans do you have to make to talk?”You are going to have to plan to put off something that you think is so much more important. And you are going to have to talk, converse, husbands and wives.Do you know that in all the studies that I have read, anything that I have read about anything concerning to do with husband’s and wife’s relationships, one of the largest categories of difficulties is...You say, “Well, it’s sexual.  That’s the big...”No, that’s not the big one.  The big one is that just cannot communicate.We are going to have to face it.  Face the situations.  Make plans. Plan to change.  And if you don’t...if you are failing to plan then you are planning to fail. I don’t care how many times you confess at the altar. You can confess and tell God you are going to change until you are blue in the face, but until you are making...Do you know what Nehemiah did?  Nehemiah said, “The walls are down. The walls are down. The walls are down. The people are in trouble.  And I am going to go to God.  And then when God lets me I am going to go to them and I am going to help.”So what do we have to do?“God, look at the situations of my life.  Ok.  I am going to pray. I want you to get my heart right. And now, then, Lord, give me the opportunity. And I am going to wait for it and I am going to step out there and I am going to help in this situation. I am going to confess.”Be patient in prayer. Don’t pray only to be delivered.  Pray that God would teach you.  Pray that God would use you. Put your priorities in order.The next thing is, be in position.  Be in position.  Do you know what? He was present when his opportunity came.  Whenever Nehemiah was...he had been praying that God would help him as he knew he was going to have to face this man. He didn’t miss work that day.  He didn’t miss his opportunity.  He was in a location where he could actually interact with a person he had to interact with.A lot of people have the whole idea of, “Man, you know, things are just getting so, you know.”  There are guys that would rather work 80 hours a week than to spend a few hours at home in conversation because they don’t want to face it. They don’t want to confess. They don’t want to be honest. They don’t want to work on it. They are not planning for anything to be different.We have got to be in position. We have got to be where we are.Do you know what?  Nehemiah did not shirk his responsibility.  He was present.  We shouldn’t either.How many of us are just not ready to show up in the face of difficulties?  If Nehemiah had been absent when his opportunity came it was going to affect not only him, but also his entire race of people were going to be affected.I want to say something to you about you parents.  You don’t know when your opportunity is going to come, but you need to be there for your children.  Be there for your children. You need to be there so that when the opportunity arises you are not out of pocket, you are not out pocket, you are not off on your own thing, you are not doing this, that or the other. You are there to have the influence on your children that you want to have.I know a person.  I won’t call their name. They are not a member of this church, but this person is very, very, very, very politically active. I mean big time.You say, “Are you against political activity?”Of course not. I think we ought to stand up.  We ought to speak up.  We ought to speak out. We ought to do what we ought to do.  But here is this individual that is just so...this person has two wonderful children. They are growing up and those kids are starting to develop some rebellious attitudes and starting to question what is going on in their home because mom is never there because she is in Washington and she is here and she is there and she is traveling and she is going and she is coming and she is doing this, that and the other.  And she is fighting abortion and she is fighting for the rights of parents and she is fighting for the home and she is fighting, fighting, fighting, fighting, fighting. And guess who she has time for? She has time for everybody, except two people. Who do you think those two people are?  Two kids.You have to plan for it.If you want the opportunity to arrive, you are going to have to be present and accounted for while they are there.Can I debunk something for you once again?  I have said this many times.  Can I please help you? I want to help you.  Throw away the idea that quality time is better than quantity time. It is a lie.  It is not true.  You are going to have greater opportunity in the regular habits of everyday life to influence your children and to show them what life is about than you are by borrowing money that you do not have, taking a trip that you cannot afford to go down there and have them fall in love with Mickey Mouse while they are still upset with you.  Quality time does not supercede quantity time.  You need to be present and accounted for.I have talked to you about my mom and dad.  Momma was here a couple of weeks ago. She is a little lady about that tall.  And my mom and dad—and you have heard me talk about them. I love them.  I revere my dad. My dad is...You say, “Was he perfect?”Of course not.“Did he have any quirks?”Yep.“Did he get upset about things?”Yep.“Did he have a temper?”Oh, boy.“Was your mom perfect?”“Were they highly educated?”“Were they smarter than other people?”“Did they have advantages?”No, no, no.  My dad graduated from high school. My mother didn’t. Neither one of them went a day of college. They didn’t know anything about that.You say, “Well, what do you think the great blessing of your mom and dad be?”Well, they did several things very, very well. Number one, they took us to church.  Number two, they believed in God and demonstrated it. But here is the big one.  Number three, that is, they were there.You say, “What do you mean by that?”I mean that the project of my father’s life was his three boys.   I mean that the project of my mother’s life were her three boys.  I remember like yesterday.  It was just like this.  Here it was.  Now, I’m not, you know, I know I am old and I know I am old fashioned and I know I came from another generation.  I know I am short, fat and bald headed.  I know all that stuff.  But listen to me for a minute.Here is what my mother would do.  I came home from West Haven Elementary School just like it was yesterday.  I came home from West Haven Elementary School in the Otis Dale subdivision of Memphis, Tennessee and I walked in that door. And when I walked in that door here is the succession of events.“Well, hello there, Philip.  Let me give you a hug.”That was my mother.  She would give me a hug and then she would say, “How as school?”And I would say, “Well, we did this, that and the other and this boy beat me up at recess and so on.”“Oh, I’m sorry.  Here.  Here is a cookie.  Here is some milk and where is your homework?”Every single day of my life going to school.You say, “Well, we don’t live in that generation. We live in another.”I know we do and aren’t we doing well?I am not here to glorify an epoch of time.  I am here to tell you that you are going to have make plans for change.  Don’t just have an emotional outbreak because you know you have a problem. “And, oh God, help me.”He will help you.  You call out to him.  “Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.”  He will answer you. But here is what is going to have to happen:  You are going to have to next make plans for change.  That is what you have to do. Make plans.Plan on changing.  Plan on getting rid of your anger.  Plan on being with your family. Plan on communicating with your wife, with your husband, with your children.  Plan on addressing those relationships. Plan on loving one another. Like just plan on it.  Make time for it and plan on it.Oh, I have got to hurry. Time is gone.  Let me get to the end of this.  When your opportunity comes and you are going to have to do something else, when your opportunity comes, number one, proceed in spite of fear.  Verse two said he was dreadfully afraid.Let me let you in on a secret.  Fear is not failure unless fear stops you.  Fear is never failure.You say, “Well, I just can’t imagine people were fearful.”Listen, Douglas MacArthur was fearful. George Patton was fearful.  Joshua was fearful. This man Nehemiah was fearful. God never promised that there would never be any fears in our life.In the book of 2 Corinthians here is what Paul’s testimony was.  He said there was conflicts without and there were fears within.  He said, “I was always being attacked from the exterior.” And he says, “I was always fearful on the interior. But God stood by me and his hand was on me.”Fear is not failure. Fear is only failure if it stops you. And so don’t be paralyzed by fear.I know people that never learned to drive a car because they are so fearful. I know people that never learned to swim because they are so fearful.  I know people that never go to college because they are afraid to approach the whole idea.  I know of people who can never call for a dental appointment, a medical appointment or call to apologize or talk to somebody or even invite anybody over for dinner they are so fearful of the telephone. They are fearful to apply for a job, fearful to talk to an offended family member.You are going to have to go forth in faith because faith is going to conquer fear.  You just step out there.Let me give you a little bit of history about how my dad taught me to swim.You say, “How did he teach you to swim?”Well, we went to Clearwater pool in Memphis, Tennessee, south Memphis and he said, “Well, there is the water.”  He grabbed me and threw me in.  He said, “Beat your arms and beat your legs.”I said...“Beat them harder.”That’s how he did it. When I...when he thought I was in trouble he jumped in, grabbed me out, put me on the outside, beat me on the backside and said, “How are you doing?”I said, “I’m doing ok.”He said, “You’re doing all right?”I said, “Fine.”“Ok, in with you again.”  He kept doing that.Guess who learned how to swim? Me.You say, “Well, I don’t know how to face the fears of my life. I don’t know how.”Yes, you do.  Face them.  Go forward in spite of the fear.  Talk to your wife.  Talk to your children.  Talk to your husband. Talk to the people you have offended.  Talk to your boss. Go see them in spite of your fear trusting God, having prayed faithfully.Face yourself the same way.  Face your alcoholism.  Face your drug addiction.  Face your pornography addiction.  Face your fits of anger and your panic attacks. Face them.[?] and then go forward in spite of the fear.  You are going to have to face these things.  Proceed in spite of fear.And there is nobody harder to approach than somebody who is suffering because of our life.The next thing, chapter two, verse four, we have spent a lot of time on this last week, but this is a little different.  Chapter two verse four says, “So I prayed to the God of heaven.”I like to call this the quick arrow of prayer, the quick arrow of prayer.  What did he do?“Well, the moment has come. Here we are.  Doomsday. I have got to face the guy. Oh God, help me.”Do you know that is where most Christians live right there? They never ever bother with talking to God, never even bother with the whole idea of a real prayer life until there is a major crisis and then they want their whole prayer life to be made up of, “God help me.”We start shooting arrows of prayer to God.Did you know this guy who is shooting an arrow of prayer to God has spent the last four months in weeping and wailing and gnashing his teeth over the situation?  He has been talking to God about it, praying about it and fasting about it and weeping about it and mourning about it. This was  not the first time he prayed.Let me let all of you in on a little secret. Whether you have been a believer for 50 years or five minutes, let me just let you know something.  Let me tell you about Christianity 101. Christianity 101 is you need to be reading a little bit of God’s Word and you need to be praying, talking to your heavenly Father.Now, let me teach you Christianity 201.  Christianity 201 is that you need to be reading a little bit of God’s Word every day and then you need to be talking to your heavenly Father.Now, let me move on to Christianity 301.  Christianity 301 means that you need to be in the Word of God a little bit every day and you need to be talking to your heavenly Father.Do you get the gist?  Do you understand where I am going with this?If you are going to be a growing Christian you are going to be in communication with your God.  No communication with your God, no intake of the Word of God, no talking back to God about what you just took in and you are not going to grow.  I don’t care how many seminars you go to. I don’t care how many conferences you go to.  You can go all over this country.  You can attend every conference on spiritual growth and on prophecy. You can attend everything. But until you and I as an individual get in the habit of talking to God about what God is talking to us about then we stagnate in our growth, our Christianity becomes peripheral, external and web come griping, complaining Christians because God doesn’t ever seem to listen to our prayers.Christianity 1001 is you need to be in God’s Word and you need to be talking to your God.  Conversation with God.  That is exactly who Nehemiah was.Do you know why it was so easy for him to say, “Oh, God, here it comes.  Help me.”It is because he had been talking to God continually about that.You say, “Pastor, do you ever falter?”Of course.“Do you miss a day?”Yeah.“Are you happy about it?”No.  But I do have a habit that I don’t want to face any day without talking to God about it first.  Oh, I wish I could get you to understand that as a Christian.  You can’t face any problem. You can’t face any relationship.  You can’t face any hardship.  You can’t face a good day.  You can’t even face your best day without talking to God first.  Why? Because you are going to give yourself credit for the good day you had.Oh, you need to talk to God.  I need to talk to God.  Oh, we need to be real Christians.  Oh what it would do for us.  There is going to come a day in this country, I believe, before my ministry is over where I cannot stand up and preach to you like I am doing right now. And your relationship to your God in heaven is going to be based on what you do by yourself alone because I believe days are coming when they are going to make it very difficult to be an open outspoken Christian.Oh, you need to be in the Word of God.  Reading it, praying it, talking to God about what you just got done reading.My, my.  Present your plan to God for change. That is chapters two, verse five through the end.  You know what you need? In this situation Nehemiah knew he couldn’t do anything without the king’s permission. And what I can say to you this morning is that you can’t do anything and shouldn’t attempt anything without your king’s permission either.He said, “I can’t go over there and do a thing.  I can’t lift a finger. I can’t move out of his sight unless he gives me permission. He is the king of the world.”Do you know who the king of the world is?  Do you know who the owner of everything is?  Do you know who owns everything?  Our heavenly Father and his Son Jesus Christ.  And before you make any decision, before you decide to marry or unmarry, before you decide to move, before you decide to dump a job and take a new job, before you decide anything you need to talk to your God about it. Get the king’s...You say, “Well what doe his permission look like?”Well, if you go to the Lord in prayer, you lay it all out before him and you seek the Scriptures and make sure you are not...Listen.  God is not calling you to leave your job. He is not calling you to leave your job and to go run a house of prostitution.  He is not calling you to do that.I mean, there are some things that are abundant in the Word of God.  He is not calling you to leave your job and go open up a corner bar.  He is not calling you to do that.Now, I could go on and on.  But here is what I am saying to you this morning. If you are going to leave one place and go to another place, if you are going to uproot your children, take them out of this school and their friends and go somewhere else, you had better talk to God about it and get his permission.You say, “What does that look like?”Well, the Bible says in Colossians chapter three, verse 15, the thing that is going to assure our hearts is the peace of God.  God’s peace.  “And the peace of God will keep your heart.” God’s peace will be flooding your soul.You say, “Well, what if I am still scared and I don’t know?”Fear is not the determiner.  Peace about doing what God has said and what God says is the right way is the determiner.  Let God’s peace guide you.  You need the king’s permission. You need the king’s protection.  And he protected...he gave him letters.  He was going to cross dangerous territory. He needed letters of escort. He needed people to go with him.You need the king’s provision.  You can’t do anything in your life without God providing for your needs.  And the Bible says that in John 15, “Without me you can do nothing,” Jesus said.All right.  And then, finally, you can count on God’s providence. And I want to end with this verse six here.  It says there, “Then the king said to me (the queen also sitting beside him), ‘How long will your journey be? And when will you return?’”You know, it put that little phrase in there,  “(the queen sitting beside him)”Very, very interesting.  For those of you that are Bible...you have been around the Bible, you know what the very next book in the Bible is. What is the next book in the Bible?Esther. Thank you very much.  Esther became the what of what?  She became the queen of what nation?  Persia, this one right here.Now, it so happens that these two books cross over. They are contemporary.  Do you know that this queen may have either been a relative, a daughter, a granddaughter or somebody of Queen Esther who had it in her heart to protect the Jews with all of her ability?Let me ask you a question.  Do you suppose that a queen...if either Esther or one of her relations were sitting there who was very much a protector of the Jews and the Jewish people, do you suppose she would be interested in raising up the wonderful walls and the wonderful city of Jerusalem again?And I have got news for you.  If the queen is not happy in a family, they ain’t nobody happy.  And in this story if Queen whoever she was, who was sitting there by the king wasn’t happy then that king was going to get an earful and he wasn’t going to be able to get away from it. And shew as going to talk to him.God had placed this queen right where she needed to be to be the influence that God needed for her to be over this king right there at that time just like Queen Esther for such a time as this.Will you listen to me for a minute?  I want to say this to you. I said this last week.In all of our difficulties, in all of your hardships and heartaches and all of your problems and all those things, let me say this to you.  God is God. He was God yesterday.  He is going to be God today.  He is going to be God tomorrow. He doesn’t take a vacation, a week off. He doesn’t take an hour off, a minute off or a second off.  He is always God and let me say this to you. God is working.You say, “But it hurts.”I am still telling you that God is working.“But my heart is broken.”God is working. Wait on him.  Wait for him to move. Look for your opportunity.  Plan for your opportunity.  Proceed in spite of the fear.  And listen to this.  Look for God’s providence, his sovereign, overabounding will in your life because God is working all things out for you.The final phrase I want you to look at is in chapter two and verse eight. The bottom says, “And the king granted them.”  He had asked for all kinds of things.  He granted him everything he asked and it says, “according to the good hand of my God upon me.”Oh, my goodness, do I love that little passage? “According to the good hand of my God upon me.”He said, “You know, I asked the king, but it really wasn’t the king.  It was because I asked my God and God’s hand was on me and therefore he moved the king.  God’s hand was on me.”There are two groups of people in the world. There is that group of people in the world that has God’s hand on them. And then there is another group of people in this world that has God’s hand opposed to them. There is that group that has God’s hand on them and he is moving them and helping them. And then there is that group in the world that has God’s hand opposed to them.The Bible says in Proverbs that, “God is angry with the wicked every day.”Really?  Yeah.  That’s what it says.The Bible says that God’s hand was on him.There is a wonderful group of people here this morning. You are not perfect and neither am I.  But you know who ultimately is in charge. And you know who, at the end of the day, who you need to trust and who your faith is in. You may mess up. You may put your hand in. You may be impatient. You may do all these things and we need to work on that.We need to do just the things I was talking about this morning.  But you are here and you know that your soul is safe.  You know that you put everything into God’s hands and that you are depending upon him for your eternity in heaven and for your life here on this earth.  You have put it all in God’s hands.Well, let me tell you something.  God’s good hand is upon you.But there is another group of people here this morning. None of this applies.You say, “Really?”No, it doesn’t apply to you.You say, “Why doesn’t it apply to me?”Because if you are not the child of God, part of the family of God, then the Bibles says very clearly his hand is not on you.  He is calling out to you. He is reaching down with his hands of love for you to come and be part of his family. He sent his Son with a demonstration of love like the world has never seen, dying on the cross for your sins, but I have got news for you.  Until you believe on him with all of your heart and say, “Lord, save me,” he doesn’t put his hand on you for all of these things that we have been talking about this morning.Nehemiah 2:1-10 (New International Version)Nehemiah 2:2Nehemiah 2:1Psalm 62:1-2Psalm 62:5Nehemiah 2:2Jeremiah 33:3 (King James Version)Nehemiah 2:4John 15:5Nehemiah 2:6Ibid.Nehemiah 2:8Ibid.Ibid.Proverbs 7:11Page  PAGE 1 of  NUMPAGES 23

Good News for Our Neighbors

Greetings Neighbor!This past year we’ve watched economic hard times hit all of us in different ways. For some, it’s the loss of a job, while for others it’s seeing the price of nearly everything from groceries to clothing rise. As a neighbor, we could tell you we are here to help, but too often words are meaningless. That is why we want to show you we are here to help.Enclosed in this bag is a coupon for a free meal courtesy of your friends at Grace Church. All you have to do is take this bag and head over to the E. Euclid Hy-Vee and redeem your coupon. The meal will include the following:

• 1 - 1 lb. roll 80% lean Ground Beef
• 1 - 16 oz. bag Hy-Vee Salad Mix
• 2 - 15 oz. cans Hy-Vee Vegetables (corn or green beans)
• 1 loaf Bakery French Bread (this does not include take & bake bread)
• 1 - 16 oz. package of Hy-Vee Spaghetti
• 1 - 26 oz. can Hunts Spaghetti Sauce
• 1 - 16 oz. Hy-Vee Salad Dressing
• 1 small box of Jello-O gelatin or instant pudding

Hy-Vee has taken the extra step of collecting all the items listed above in one convenient location. Simply ask any associate where the Grace Church display is setup within the store. The coupon is valid through the endof October.Also in the bag you will find a card inviting you to a free breakfast this Sunday, Sept. 27 at the church. We’ll be serving from 7:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. in the church’s Family Life Center. Simply bring the card and you and yourentire family can eat for free.Finally, we’ve included a copy of the Bible. This is a New Living Translation, which is a great Bible for daily reading. It’s our prayer that in tough times (and we all have them), you will find hope and encouragement in theBible. If you need a good place to start, consider reading the Gospel of John in the New Testament.Don’t forget our neighborhood clothing drive, Share What You Wear, is coming on Nov. 19-21. If you’ve never been to Share What You Wear, you will find thousands of articles of clothing for all ages and all sizes for the taking. It’s like a giant garage sale, and everything is free!God bless you, and thanks for being great neighbors!Your friends at Grace Church.